Development, Implementation and Assessment of a new degree program in AOSS

Development, Implementation and Assessment of a new degree program in AOSS

Grant:
Gilbert Whitaker Fund for the Improvement of Teaching
Academic Year:
2014 - 2015 (June 1, 2014 through May 31, 2015)
Funding Requested:
$10,000.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
mmoldwin
Overview of the Project:
The goal of the Whitaker Grant funding is to help develop, implement and assess the new AOSS curriculum. The goal and motivation of the new curriculum are to prepare students well for graduate studies or careers in space science, space engineering, atmospheric and climate science, and climate impact engineering. The two engineering tracks are designed to better connect to the mission of the College to prepare engineers. Specifically, the grant will support all of the faculty that teach undergraduates in space science and engineering and the atmospheric and climate faculty involved with the curriculum revision efforts to jointly develop several new courses and revise several existing courses that play significant parts of the new undergraduate curriculum. The curriculum revision was begun in the 2013/2014 AY and continues this year. The new curriculum calls for significant modifications of our lab courses and the creation of a new track focused on Space Engineering. In addition to the development of new course descriptions, outlines and syllabus, the Whitaker grant will support the implementation and assessment of the new courses during AY 2015/2016. We will work with CRLT-in-Engineering on designing an assessment protocol and use modified Mid-Term Evaluations during and at the end of the course to gather data on the effectiveness of the lab and course designs. The framework developed will be used to follow a cohort through the new curriculum and will be used for both formative assessment as well as play a significant role in our ABET accreditation efforts.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:

The goal of the grant was to assist the faculty to completely revise its curriculum in 2013/2014-2014/2015. The grant brought faculty together throughout the academic year and over the summer to develop two new degree programs and included a faculty retreat.

Project Achievements:

The curriculum development ended of the old degree program (Earth System Science and Engineering BSE) and the created two new degrees (Climate and Meteorology BSE and Space Sciences and Engineering BSE). The new curricula were developed with an “augmented” department Curriculum Committee that included discussions with faculty assigned to teach the new or modified courses that were developed. The course approval and the new curriculum approvals were shepherded through the department Curriculum Committee, the College’s Curriculum Committee, the College Faculty and through the Regents (to approve the new degrees). The revision coincided with the name change of the department to Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering. A new minor was also developed that was also approved by LSA. Faculty teams (from the Climate and the Space side) worked on the new course descriptions and the development of the Syllabus to ensure that our major courses could be taught by a broad majority of our faculty (they had been “segregated” between Atmospheric and Space courses in terms of content). With the department name change our course name was changed from AOSS to either CLIMATE or SPACE and for our major courses, they are listed under both CLIMATE/SPACE (e.g., CLIMATE 320/SPACE 320).

Continuation:
Last academic year was the first year for the revised 300-level course offerings and saw the development of several of the new courses. A new 405 course was developed to help logistically to teach new courses for the first time similar to what has been used at the graduate level with a 605 course numbering system. After the new course has been taught once, a formal new course petition is developed that has a syllabus and student evaluations. This year due to six sabbatical leaves and one faculty departure, we are postponing the teaching of two of the proposed new courses, but are teaching two new 405 lab-based courses. Space in the basement of the SRB is being revamped by the college to help support both ENG 100 and CLASP lab courses. The “augmented” Curriculum Committee approach of involving faculty developing and teaching the new courses in the Curriculum Committee discussions will continue this academic year.
Dissemination:
The two new degree programs are now published in the UM catalog. The painful process of creating two new degrees is probably the reason that curricula are revised only on the decadal timescale since the memory of the process needs to fade from the corporate memory of the department. The Whitaker Grant significantly enabled bringing faculty together regularly over a multi-year process and enabled the development of shared vision.
Advice to your Colleagues:
Development of a new undergraduate degree program will take at least two-years. The first efforts need to be the development of a shared vision for the learning goals and objectives.
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