Constituent Input Subcommittee Meeting Minutes

Tuesday March 28, 9:00 am, Thornton

Present: Ray English, Haipeng Li, Albert Borroni, Jessica Grim, Scott Saluga, Shozo Kawaguchi.

Overview of Academic Project

Ray started the meeting by presenting an overview of the Academic Commons Project. He talked about the history of the project, how it first got started, ideas behind it, and so on. There was a document called Rethinking Mudd drafted by Sabastian Faber last year which was sent to the Library Committee. That was how the Committee started thinking about and discussing this idea. Earlier this year Ray came up with a one page document on the Academic Commons Project based on discussions at the Library Committee and was sent to college trustees and the president, which was favorably reviewed and supported. The idea behind the project is to rethink Mudd as a central place for students’ learning and for students and faculty interaction in this learning process.

Overview of subcommittee charge

We started our discussions about the charge for this committee which is to solicit input from various groups on campus, mainly students and faculty, on the Academic Commons Project and Mudd in general. The tasks involved include conducting surveys and holding focus group sessions. The data this subcommittee will be getting will be used in other subcommittees in the planning process so there is a need to get this data as early as possible.

Haipeng and Jessica distributed a few articles as background reading and examples of how surveys and focus groups are carried out. Two of them seem to be on target:

“Using Student Focus Groups to Inform Library Planning and Marketing” by Melissa L. Becher and Janice L. Flug, in College and Undergraduate Libraries, v.12, no.1/2, 2005, pp.1-18.
“What student Want: Generation Y and the Changing Function of the Academic Library” by Susan Gardner and Susanna Eng, in portal: Libraries and the Academy, v. 5, n.3, 2005, pp.405-420.

Timeline for subcommittee’s work

Discussions around the time issue in terms of when to do the surveys and focus groups were held. It looks like we have a very tight time schedule, specifically if we do focus groups with students. Shozo pointed out that it would be unrealistic to get students involved after May 1 st, when they are getting ready for finals. So we only have about 4 weeks to work with. We will need to come up with survey topics and questions within 2 or 3 weeks if we want to do the focus groups in the final week of April. More discussion on the time issue will be held at the next meeting. We decided to do both surveys and focus groups concurrently.

Albert pointed out that it would be good to have Blackboard set up so that all the materials can be uploaded and we will have a central place for them. He will work on it this afternoon and let us know when it’s done so we can start putting the articles and websites on Blackboard.

We also talked about having a student rep on this committee. Shozo indicated that it would be a long process if we go through the Student Senate to have one appointed. We thought it might be a good idea to see if we can find a student in CIT or the Library who might be willing to do it. Scott will check with his students to see if we can find someone; if that does not work, we will try the Library assistants.

Haipeng contacted Scott Bennett about using the information on his website and his surveys. Scott is fine with us using the surveys. Haipeng will send out the URL for both his website and the surveys (Alber suggested that we put them on Blackboard).

Schedule meetings for remainder of spring term

We also talked about meeting times for the rest of the semester. Considering the amount of work ahead of us, we thought it would be a good idea to meet on a weekly basis. We decided on the 1:00 pm Monday time as out regular meeting time. The location will be Thornton (Haipeng will reserve it) and use the CIT Lab 403 as a backup location.

We also talked about looking at survey questions from other institutions if available. Scott will contact schools in GLITTER consortium and Albert will contact the NITLE schools to see if anything is available that we can use.

For next meeting:

Come up with survey topics and questions.
Discussion of specific timeline.

Minutes by Haipeng Li