Refined QEP Snapshot Available

Posted on August 21, 2017 by bjohns13

Over the summer, the QEP Committee has worked to further refine the QEP topic. Below is a snapshot of the refined title, goal statement, framework, and student learning outcomes.

Title

Navigating Career Paths through Exploration, Preparation, and Experience in the Liberal Arts

Goal Statement

Our goal is to engage Arts & Humanities students in an intentional program of career exploration, preparation, and experience to support the evolution of their professional lives.

Framework

Discover, Discern, Explore

Students discover their personality traits and personal values.

Build, Develop, Prepare

Students identify transferable skills and build career management skills.

Engage, Experience, Reflect

Students engage in experiential learning and reflection.

Student Learning Outcomes

Through engaging in the Quality Enhancement Plan, students will:

Demonstrate awareness of their personality traits.
Demonstrate awareness of their personal values.
Give examples of how skills can be used in a variety of professional contexts.
Demonstrate basic career management skills.
Demonstrate an understanding of how experiential learning informs their career trajectory.

School of Arts and Humanities Summer Workshops

Posted on July 27, 2017 by bjohns13

In June and July, faculty members from the School of Arts and Humanities participated in two planning workshops, engaging with members of the QEP Committee to further develop the vision, goal, student learning outcomes, and activities of the QEP.

In the June workshop, a group of ten Arts and Humanities faculty members, along with nine members of the QEP Committee, reviewed the recent history of the QEP development, including the recommendations and suggestions received during the SACS on-site visit, the faculty and student feedback from the community forums held in May, and the working QEP framework and goal statement. The faculty members reflected on and discussed the state of career preparation from a disciplinary perspective and offered guidance on the conceptualization of “career” in the context of the QEP. The group reviewed career development theories and approaches emerging from the QEP Literature Review process, refined the student learning outcomes, and began to brainstorm activities that align with student learning outcomes.

The second QEP Summer workshop was held in July, with 13 Arts and Humanities faculty members and 13 QEP Committee members participating. This workshop focused almost entirely on fine-tuning the student learning outcomes and identifying high impact activities to fulfill the learning outcomes.

Throughout these two workshops, the Arts and Humanities faculty members offered critical feedback and creative suggestions that have greatly enhanced the development of the QEP. Their contributions ensure that we are offering a program of career exploration and preparation that addresses an issue of high interest and need among students, is focused on student learning, and is true to the identity of St. Edward’s.

QEP Co-Directors Named and School Identified

Posted on July 11, 2017 by bjohns13

The Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) Committee continues to refine and enhance the QEP and is pleased to share these recent developments:

QEP Co-Directors Named
- Faculty Co-Director: Kim Garza, Associate Professor of Graphic Design
- Staff Co-Director: Erin Ray, Student Academic Support Services

QEP Pilot School Identified
- The School of Arts & Humanities will serve as the pilot school for the Quality Enhancement Plan. Faculty members from the following departments are participating in summer workshops to help shape the QEP:
  - Languages, Literatures and Cultures
  - Literature, Writing and Rhetoric
  - Performing Arts
  - Philosophy
  - Religious and Theological Studies
  - Visual Studies

QEP Community Forum Results

Posted on June 16, 2017 by bjohns13

The Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) Committee held Community Forums in May to engage St. Edward’s faculty, staff and students in the QEP refinement process. Over 250 community members provided feedback on the refinement of the QEP topic and framework.

Using the feedback from these forums, the QEP Committee has further refined the QEP topic and framework. The current working definition of the QEP is as follows:

The goal of the QEP is to engage students in an iterative process of career exploration, preparation and experience to support the evolution of their professional lives.
The three elements of the QEP Framework are:
- Discover, Discern, Explore
- Build, Develop, Prepare
- Engage, Experience
More than providing students a single experience of career preparation, the QEP framework may be used throughout a graduate’s professional life as their career evolves and changes over time.

The QEP Committee wishes to thank all faculty, staff and students who participated in the community forums for their thoughtful engagement and feedback. As it continues the revision process, the QEP Committee will be moving from topic refinement to revising the Student Learning Outcomes, activities and assessment plan for the QEP.

Additional opportunities to engage with the QEP refinement process will be announced in Horizon and posted on this site.

Staff Forum Invitation

Posted on May 15, 2017 by bjohns13

The Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) Committee invites all staff members of the St. Edward’s University community to participate in a round table discussion. Since Spring 2015, the 16-person committee has been meeting to select and develop a QEP topic, write the enhancement plan, and recently presented to the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACSCOC). Community feedback collected at these events will focus our course of action for enhancing student learning over the next 5 years.

You are invited to attend one of the upcoming sessions:

May 22, 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. / Mabee Ballroom A / Lunch provided
May 25, 3:30 – 5 p.m. / Mabee Ballroom A / Wine and appetizers provided

Each forum will feature a short information presentation followed by breakout discussions. Your questions, ideas and insights are welcomed. Please register to attend at http://ow.ly/5tOC30bEnWK, as food will be provided during each session.

If you cannot attend a session, please complete the anonymous online survey at http://ow.ly/uCDP30bcCwo. The QEP Committee will review and consider all community input before finalizing the QEP report and related activities.

More information about the QEP may be found online at http://ow.ly/trjS30be8F8.

Info: Nicole Trevino, Associate Vice President for Academic Services, 512-428-1037

Seeking Input on Revised QEP Framework

Posted on May 2, 2017 by Rebecca Davis

Help define and refine our QEP–scroll down for a link to a survey and a list of our open questions.

QEP Background

The QEP’s original focus on Vocation, “Discovering One’s Purpose in a Changing World,” was determined to be too large by the SACSCOC On-Site Reaffirmation Committee. They felt we had too many wide-ranging activities and left vocation too nebulous to be successfully assessed. They suggested that we narrow our focus to “career and life planning” based on their findings from our written report and the interviews they conducted with both students and faculty.

With this suggested focus in mind, the QEP Interim Implementation Team has created an initial framework to guide the redevelopment of goals and SLOs. We would like students to learn about the process of career and life planning as opposed to an emphasis on getting jobs. We feel this is more in line with our liberal arts and Holy Cross approach to education.

Community Input Needed

Continue reading →

Faculty Forum Invitation

Posted on April 27, 2017 by bjohns13

The Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) Committee invites all faculty members of the St. Edward’s University community to participate in a round table discussion. Since Spring 2015, the 16-person committee has been meeting to select and develop a QEP topic, write the enhancement plan, and recently presented to the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACSCOC). Community feedback collected at these events will focus our course of action for enhancing student learning over the next 5 years.

You are invited to attend one of the upcoming sessions:

May 1, 12 – 1:15 p.m. / Maloney Room, Main Building / Faculty Forum 1 with box lunch
May 4, 4 – 5:15 p.m./ Fleck 305/ Faculty Forum 2 with hors d’oeuvres

Each round table will feature a short information presentation followed by breakout discussions. Your questions, ideas and insights are welcomed. Please register to attend, as food will be provided during each session.

If you cannot attend a session, please complete the anonymous online survey. The QEP Committee will review and consider all community input before finalizing the QEP report and related activities.

Student Forum Invitation

Posted on April 27, 2017 by bjohns13

Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) Student Forum Invitation

The Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) Committee invites all St. Edward’s University students to participate in a round table discussion. Since Spring 2015, the 16-person committee has been meeting to select and develop a QEP topic, write the enhancement plan, and recently presented to the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACSCOC). Community feedback collected at these events will focus our course of action for enhancing student learning over the next 5 years.

You are invited to attend the upcoming session:

May 2, 11-12:15 / Mabee Ballrooms B & C / Student Forum with lunch and t-shirts

The forum will feature a short information presentation followed by topical discussions. Your questions, ideas and insights are welcomed.

Please register to attend, as food and End of Year t-shirts will be provided during the forum.

If you cannot attend a session, please complete the anonymous online survey. The QEP Committee will review and consider all community input before finalizing the QEP report and related activities in June 2017.

Update on QEP from President Martin

Posted on April 26, 2017 by Rebecca Davis

From the Office of the President, April 25, 2017–

I want to extend my thanks to all in the St. Edward’s University community who welcomed the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) on-site committee to our campus earlier this month as part of our normal process of re-accreditation. The committee expressly stated that it felt a sense of true hospitality and that St. Edward’s stands as an “example of an institution whose mission permeates every corner of the campus, from its curriculum to its co-curricular activities to its way of thinking and talking about the purpose of higher education in general.” In particular, I want to thank those on the on-site logistical and technical teams who made themselves available around the clock to support the needs of our visitors.

QEP
A major focus of an on-site visit is the review of the required Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP). Reflecting the fine work of our QEP committees, the on-site committee praised our proposed QEP as noble and ambitious and in keeping with our Holy Cross mission. They did, however, offer some specific and very useful recommendations about the QEP design:

Narrow the focus of QEP activities by honing and articulating a clearer definition of “vocation.”

Reduce the number of student learning outcomes to be tracked.

Consider piloting the QEP within a smaller subset, such as a school or a group of targeted majors.

These recommendations are intended to be helpful and ensure the success of the QEP going forward. They will allow us to re-engage in community dialogue that will sharpen the focus and reduce the scope to be more manageable and measurable.

Next Steps
The university will prepare a written response to the recommendations and submit it to SACSCOC by September 7, 2017.

The QEP Implementation Team, led by Nicole Trevino, AVP for Student Academic Support Services, has a plan to gain broad-based community input — including several faculty, staff and student forums over the next few weeks — to refine the QEP topic of vocation and its associated goals.

Forum invitations will appear in Horizon and other communication channels soon; I encourage each of you to participate.

Work will continue through August as the response gets finalized for the September deadline.

The QEP Implementation Team will share further updates with the community in August.

The September written response should conclude our portion of a very long and important process of re-accreditation. I greatly appreciate the enormous number of hours of work contributed by so many people across campus who have been involved in the process over the last two years. They gathered data, wrote the Compliance Certification and the Focus Report, hosted the on-site committee and selected, developed and planned the implementation of the QEP. Thanks to their service, we have impressed SACSCOC representatives with a very strong presentation of the mission and quality of our beloved university. All the reports will be reviewed by the SACS board of trustees in a process that leads to re-accreditation in December 2017.

George E. Martin, PhD

Final Quality Enhancement Plan Submitted to SACSCOC

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Rebecca Davis

Our final draft of our Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) has been submitted to SACSCOC as part of our ten-year reaccreditation cycle. The full draft is available to community members in Box: https://stedwards.box.com/s/062r4d5xb5f5ykvsg6ljs0gp551vb25t

The executive summary is below:

St. Edward’s University’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), Vocation: Discovering One’s Purpose in a Changing World, will provide our first time traditional undergraduate students with a four-year, integrated plan for vocational discovery. Our goal is to emphasize and enrich the Holy Cross tradition of vocation by inviting students to answer:

what contribution do I want to make;
how am I preparing to make this contribution;
in what context(s) can I make this contribution(s);
how do I integrate my liberal arts experience with complex problems faced by the world today?

At the heart of our mission is the cultivation of the mind in concert with the heart as well as the Holy Cross practice of preparing useful citizens for society. The intertwining of these concepts forms a core component of our identity—a component embodied in vocational discovery. Our definition of vocation embraces the Latin roots of the term VOCARE (to call) and VOX (voice) meaning calling. As part of our mission to help students “understand themselves, clarify their personal values and recognize their responsibility to the world community” we are committed to cultivating their callings and life purpose(s). In addition, we recognize that our students are facing an ever-changing world due to accelerating technological, economic and cultural shifts. Our mission is “to instill the critical skills that flex, bend and weather life’s tests.” Continue reading →