Difference between revisions of "Glossary"

Revision as of 12:42, 2 June 2008

A

Academic Advising:
 A student support service available in the Student Advising Center and through Prime Time advising located in campus housing Academic Advising offers up-to-date information on internships, academic programs, faculty, and academic services.

Academic Fair: A two hour information and advising session involving representatives of all programs offered in the next (or in the case of spring) next two quarters. Students use the fair to meet faculty, collect up to date descriptions and gather information to help them make choices about which programs to register for.

All-Level Programs: Programs that allow freshmen to work alongside sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Faculty intentionally reserve a specific number of spaces in the program for first-year students.

Agenda Committee: Elected faculty committee that organizes the agenda of the Faculty Meeting and works with the Provost’s office to schedule faculty members into governance assignments. The Agenda Committee helps identify faculty issues and often negotiates with Administrators about the charge to DTF’s.

C Campus Master Plan: Major planning document that identifies and organizes the physical planning issues on the campus. It provides overall guidance about the physical development of the grounds and facilities needs. The Campus Land Use Committee (CLUC) made up of staff, faculty and students serves as the primary advisor to the Director of Facilities and helps organize a campus wide review of the plan.

Collaborative Learning: A variety of educational approaches involving joint intellectual effort by students or students and teachers together; usually in groups of two or more students mutually search for understanding, meaning, solutions, or in the creation of a product.

Continuing Appointment: The appointment of a faculty member to an on-going (non-term) contract. Distinguished from tenure in that it is not competitive and does not imply a promotion in rank.

Contract: See Individual Learning Contract

Coordinated Study Programs: 
A learning community model using a team-taught, multidisciplinary program of study. Students and a team of faculty drawn from different disciplines use a block of time (from 1 to 3 quarters) to examine a central theme. Within a program, learning activities can take a variety of formats including lecture, lab, workshop, seminar, field trips, etc.

Core Programs: 
Coordinated study programs for first-year students. Core programs provide links to student services, particularly Academic Advising, and explicit attention to college level skills in reading, writing and seminar participation.

Courses: 
Part-time courses, offered for 2,4, or 6 credits, that supplement the main curriculum. They can be combined with coordinated study programs, individual learning contracts, and internships.

Covenant: A basic program document outlining the rights and responsibilities of students and faculty. Faculty and students usually sign program covenants. Basic expectations and appeals processes and credit policy for the program are usually outlined.

D DTF: (Disappearing Task Force)
A collaborative work group created to study various topics and make recommendations to the campus community. The group disbands when the group's work is done. Several DTFs are active each academic year. Faculty, Staff, and Students serve on DTF’s the mix of participants depends upon the issue investigated.

E Equivalencies: Equivalencies represent Faculty Member’s best judgment about how to describe the integrated work of an interdisciplinary program as course work. They are a required piece of the formal transcript.' Evaluation Conference: As a part of the Narrative Evaluation process each student meets with his/her faculty member to review the students work, learning, plans, and development over the course of the quarter. Such conferences are a fundamental location for reflection on student work, goals, and development. They are central to reflexive learning.

Evergreen Social Contract: 
Written by founding faculty members, the Social Contract contains guidelines for social ethics and working together that help Evergreen function as a community.

Expectations of an Evergreen Graduate: 
A set of broad standards that Evergreen students are expected to have accomplished by the time they have earned an Evergreen degree. The Expectations of an Evergreen Graduate are used to assess student learning (see Learning Section of the Teaching and Learning Report and the End of Program Review Data).

F Faculty Seminar: A weekly faculty team meeting focused on sharing understandings and ideas about the central text for the week in a program.

First-Time, First-Year Students: 
First college attendance since high school graduation. Includes students with college credits earned prior to high school graduation, such as Running Start, Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), and College in the High School.

The Five Foci: 
The five underlying principles of the Evergreen educational experience: Interdisciplinary Study, Collaborative Learning, Learning Across Significant Differences, Personal Engagement, Linking Theory with Practical Application. For discussion of five foci see Standard 2

FTE: Full-Time Equivalency refers to either faculty or student load, and is used to calculate enrollment and budget figures. One FTE represents a full-time unit load. Per State of Washington standards, one undergraduate FTE = 15 credits per quarter; one graduate FTE = 10 credits per quarter.

Full-time Student: 
A full-time undergraduate student is enrolled in 12-20 credits per quarter in any combination of programs, courses, contracts, or internships. (Full-time students are not limited to those students enrolled in the full-time curriculum. A full-time graduate student is enrolled in 10-16 credits per quarter.

G Geoduck: Large marine bivalve (Panopea abrupta) with a neck up to two meters long found in Puget Sound. (Delicious when fried or in chowder) The name is from the Lushootseed (Nisqually) g’ideq meaning to dig deep. It is the official mascot of the Evergreen State College. A student of the Evergreen State College.

Geoduck Union: The student government of the Evergreen State College student body.

Group Contract: An Evergreen program (usually advanced) with one or two faculty and a focused theme or problem to investigate. More narrowly focused than Coordinated Study programs.

H Higher Education Coordinating Board (HECB): 
A state agency governed by a 10-member citizen board that is charged by state law to represent the broad public interest in higher education.

I Individual Learning Contract: 
An individual study plan initiated by a student and sponsored by a faculty member. Contracts are written for one quarter and may be for full or part-time work. Individual contracts are usually used for advanced work.

Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS): 
A system of surveys to gather information from all institutions and educational organizations whose primary purpose is to provide post-secondary education. Data includes information about enrollments, program completions, faculty, staff, and finances. The surveys are administered by the National Center for Educational Statistics.

Interdisciplinary: Interdisciplinary at its most basic refers to programs of study that involve the intersection of two or more traditional academic disciplines or which transcends disciplines in the pursuit of a robust intellectual understanding of an issue. There is little orthodoxy about which church of interdisciplinarity Evergreen faculty members attend. Acolytes of instrumental multi-disciplinary, thematic study, project based experience and more teach at the college, yet nearly all find that interdisciplinary work provides the essential pattern that allows for the emergence of connections, the creation of new kinds of understandings, and ultimately the possibility for students to find their own way/work into the curriculum.' Internship: 
Supervised experience in a work situation for which a student receives academic credit. Internships can be full or part time. Students usually undertake documentation of experience and /or supplemental study as a part of the internship

Inter-area Programs: Inter-area programs refer to programs where faculty members come form two or more planning units to design and teach a program. Planning units are expected to provide 20% of their teaching to inter-area programs.

Inter-divisional Programs: Inter-divisional programs are programs where faculty members from across two or more of the traditional divisions (arts, natural sciences, social sciences, or humanities) are involved in planning and teaching program. Such programs may or may not be inter-area as area boundaries and membership are not identical to divisional ones.

ITCH A cross-areas collaborative group entitled the Information Technology Collaborative Hive (ITCH) provides the most formal mechanism for collaboration around technology across the various parts of the college. Evergreen supports three ITCH groups: Academic, Administrative, and Core.

L Learning Community: 
A purposeful structuring of curriculum to link together a variety of learning experiences and subject matter so that students find greater coherence in what they are learning and greater interaction with faculty and peers. See also coordinated studies and collaborative learning.

N Narrative Evaluation: 
Evergreen's system of narrative evaluation consists of an evaluation of a student's academic work at the end of each quarter. Faculty members write evaluations of each student's work and progress, and each student writes a self-evaluation. At the end of the program or when a student leaves the program, the evaluations become official documents, which along with a program description and equivalencies make up the permanent transcript. Students also write evaluations of faculty members, which become part of the faculty member's official portfolio. Narrative evaluations are the focus of conversation at end of the quarter evaluation conferences.

P Part-time Student: A part-time undergraduate student is enrolled in less than 12 credits per quarter, in any combination of programs, courses, contracts, or internships. Part-time students are not limited to those students enrolled in Evening/Weekend Studies offerings. A part-time graduate student is enrolled in less than 10 credits per quarter.

Planning Unit: Faculty affiliations for the purposes of curricular planning. Planning units include: Culture, Text and Language; Environmental Studies; Evening and Weekend Studies; Expressive Arts; Native American and World Indigenous Peoples; Scientific Inquiry; Society, Politics, Behavior and Change; and Tacoma.

PUC (Planning Unit Coordinator): PUC are faculty members who undertake the organization and administrative work of a Planning Unit. Their primary responsibility is work individually and collectively with the Curriculum Deans to help organize the curriculum planning. They receive release time in spring quarter.

Program: See coordinated studies program.

Program Description: A brief Retrospective description of a program’s work usually includes faculty and major texts, identifies critical assignments, projects, and activities and highlights skills or capacities developed. Descriptions provide the general framework within which student self-evaluations and faculty evaluations of students are written. They are a piece of the official transcript.

Program Retreat: Program retreat is several day field trip designed to focus on important introductory work in the first quarter of a program, or presentation and integration and celebration of work in the final quarter. Program retreats figure strongly in establishing the interpersonal bonds as well as the intellectual themes that constitute a learning community. The ability to do these retreats is a fundamental value of full time study.

Q QuaSR' Center': Quantitative and Scientific Reasoning Center is the location of tutoring support and program support for work in mathematics and sciences.

R Regular Students: Students admitted to the college and assumed to be pursuing a degree; also referred to as matriculated or degree-seeking students.

Retention: 
Refers to a student's persistence at Evergreen from one term to another. Often calculated as a fall quarter to fall quarter measurement, i.e. of students enrolled in a particular fall quarter how many are still enrolled the subsequent fall.

S Seminars: 
A central experience of an Evergreen education. In a seminar, a faculty member and up to 25 students meet to discuss and analyze assigned texts.

SOS (Student Originated Studies)
Refers to academic programs that are based on group projects developed by students.

Student Self-Evaluation: 
Students' evaluations of their academic work as measured against their objectives for the quarter and the requirements of their program, course, contract, or internship. Self-evaluations are part of students' formal academic records. (See Evaluation conference and narrative evaluation.)

Summative Self-Evaluation: 
A final evaluation written by a senior that provides a summary and overview of his or her undergraduate educational experience. Faculty encourage and support it.

Super Saturday: A major one day annual celebration of Evergreen and the Olympia Area Community held the day after graduation each year. Lots of Balloons, crafts, food, face painting, music, and the like.

T Tribal Reservation Based/Community-Determined Program: 
Coordinated studies program primarily designed for upper-division students. The Tribal Program emphasizes community building within Native American communities.

W

Week Five Warning: Official warning to students by faculty of loss or potential loss of credit in a quarter.

Workshop: Workshop typically refers to a structured conversation in a program in small and large groups around a particular set of concepts or aspects of a text. They are designed to encourage active work, collaboration, and intellectual discovery. Workshops often last for two or more hours and involve several activities.

Writing Seminar: A small seminar designed to focus attention on a formal piece of writing form students. The process involves peers as audience and respondent tow writing as well as faculty.

Writing Across the Curriculum: Refers to the responsibility of all faculty to not only assign, but to teach elements of writing appropriate to the subject matter. Writing is not understood as separated from program content.