Alignment & Coordination: Curricula & Co-Curricula (ACCC) Subcommittee

June 23, 2006 Meeting Notes

Committee Chair: Dick Knight

Agenda for the meeting of Friday, June 23, 2006 10:00-12:00, OMSI Board Room

10:00 -	Introductions
	OMSI Proposal
	Paradigms for Curricular Change/ Strategic Alternatives (under discussion in the OPAS Steering Committee)
	Continuation of Prior Discussions & ACCC Business
- 12:00	Scheduling of next meeting and adjournment

Notes - posted 7/7/06 - download the pdf

OPAS Alignment & Coordination: Curricular & Co-curricular (ACCC)
Working Session (Meeting #5) June 23, 2006 OMSI Board Room

Attendees:  Mary Beth Horton (BEC), Ray VanDiver (OMSI), Dick Knight (Saturday Academy), Bruce Schafer (OUS), Michal Young (UO), Jeremy Tucker (OUS/OPAS), Jo Oshiro (OUS/OPAS)

Purpose: This meeting was convened with only about half of the active committee members in order to keep the momentum going on the OMSI proposal, which addresses one of the committee’s areas of concern, and to help develop the relationship with BEC.

Summary

OMSI Proposal (download pdf ):

This proposal starts with a workshop/conference event and is followed by some survey work with two follow-up meetings using OMSI’s Distance Learning technologies.  The goals, in order of priority and timing:

• Create a community of co-curricular providers to leverage cooperation, funding, resources, knowledge
• Provide a locus to interface informal education providers and systems to formal classroom educators and systems.
• Help provide a resource and PR to connect co-curricular providers to their customers, parents and students.
• Help provide baseline data in a world almost devoid of same:  numbers of providers, numbers of programs, numbers of students served, money spent, geographies.   Our previous attempt to quantify roughly how much is spent on STEM co-curricular programs via 501(c)3 and IRS forms 990 was not successful.  Most of these programs are buried inside wider co-curricular offerings or other program activity.
• Dick - Cheapest way to effect change is to get data. 
• Are there any luminaries out there with whom we have not made contact? Form a task force for the data effort? Mary Beth can connect us to a BEC Board Member who is also a member of ASTD (American Society for Training and Development).  This person may be able to do probono survey work, their specialty.  A well structured survey is critical to gathering quality data - important to know what you are doing andwhat you want at the back end.
•  7/7/06 – Jo notes that much more data is available, although not usually targeted on STEM education, if one uses the term “OST” (Out of School Time).  She’s chasing data on those terms.

• It’s important to get a funding commitment from ETIC while OMSI is still focused on this proposal and willing to partner with substantial in-kind contributions.
• BEC agrees to update the BEC/Intel Techno Supersite with the information gathered in the course of the proposed project.
• An additional issue – branding.  Should we continue with a new acronym, as detailed in the proposal, or brand these activities as something like “The OPAS Co-curricular Summit”?
• Bruce:  Because the ETIC/OPAS RFP is over, there is a process problem.  ETIC does have planning funds available, which we may be able to access.
• Dick Knight:  We’ll test this process.  I’ll write a cover memo to the OPAS Steering committee (BEC, ACCC, OMSI  volunteer to review) for the  proposal as it currently stands.  We are eager to nail down an ETIC funding commitment to keep the OMSI commitment on track and not lose this opportunity.

Discussion Highlights:

• OPAS must position itself so it is not another special pleading, curriculum of the week.  We must make a wider approach, and position ourself as part of the solution for improving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education.

Tour of Videoconferencing facilities
Ray took Jo, Jeremy, Michal, Mary Beth, and Dick on a tour of the small classroom used for videoconferencing, and a peek into the auditorium (an event was in progress) led by OMSI’s local expert. OMSI is happy to offer these facilities for OPAS use because of the congruence of missions of OPAS and OMSI.  For optimal performance, its best to conference no more than 4-8 sites total.  The quality of the link is dictated by the lowest-quality machine in the conference.  Many rural Oregon libraries have videoconferencing links and experience.

Action Items:

• Ray – take suggestions back to the grantwriting staff:
• Clear title
• Short abstract; business rather than scientific wording and style;
• Meeting facilitator price at $1500 is probably low
• Dick – cover memo.
• Jo – provide links and data:
  • Closing the Achievement Gap 2005 Conference sponsored by Susan Castillo, ODE; get materials, attendees, speakers list to Ray, Dick.  (email response expected from Dona Bolt, ODE conference organizer, after July 10; scanned materials available on the ACCC webpage)
  • NWGCP (Northwest Girls’ Collaborative Project) - http://www.pugetsoundcenter.org/ngcp/nwgcp/
  • NGCP (National Girls’ Collaborative Project) - http://www.nwrel.org/nwreport/2005-01/stem.html
  • To Ray and Dick: Contact info for those people active in various forms of Co-curricular outreach in Jo’s Contacts database. (done 6/30/06 via email)
  • To Mary Beth Horton (done 6/30/06 via email)
    • OPAS Steering Committee - http://opas.ous.edu/steering.htm
    • OPAS ACCC - http://opas.ous.edu/Committees/ACCC.html
• Mary Beth – share Susan Castillo’s positioning speech at http://www.ode.state.or.us/news/announcements/announcement.aspx?=1427.

• All - What would we want on Technosupersite that is not on there now?  Additional providers?  Funnel answers to Jo for collation.

Next Meeting:  Poll for early August, preferably after Bruce has a chance to get feedback on proposal funding.

Additional Discussion Points

OPAS and STEM

• Dick: OPAS needs to converge on what we want the STEM community to accomplish in the next 5 years. An alliance with the STEM community would cast a wider net, avoid positioning OPAS as another special pleading.  At some point, we (OPAS as a whole) want to sit down with ODE.  (7/7/06 – Jo notes that in a meeting of the SCC subcommittee, Walt Mayberry, former HS teacher, said that distinguishing between science and engineering too quickly is a mistake.  In middle school particularly, the boundaries between the two are very fuzzy.)

• Bruce:  Is OPAS a key forum for addressing STEM strategy in Oregon? 
• We are at least highly relevant. 
• Leery of too big a bite – concerned about making measurable progress.
• Vicki Fleming & Ginger Redlinger are leaving ODE.  (Ginger will be teaching science in Oregon City.)  We are improving our connections with the State Board of Education, particularly Duncan Wyse.  OSBE knows ODE staff is critical to solving the [STEM] problem, but are beginning to see they are not sufficient.
• MaryBeth:  BEC is willing to discuss how their teacher professional development initiative, Preparing for theClassroom of the 21st century, could complement our efforts – They have an RFP out with due dates in a few weeks, heavily weighted toward STEM.

• Ray: Can’t measure progress now because we don’t have data – budget, numbers, geographies.
• Dick: We don’t harvest the top end, that is, academically high-achieving white middle class students choose other options besides engineering and technical careers.  Cocurricular activities are currently one of the best tools for bridging the engagement gap which often can’t happen in the classroom.
• Bruce:  Need to make a fix to the engineering education pipeline comparable to the fix of the doctor pipeline for women.
• K12 education currently taken captive by the equity issue.

• How do OPAS and STEM activities  relate to ODE’s Closing the Achievement Gap conferences?  (Jo will distribute/post information on these)
• Dick: Women with BSs in engineering get MS degrees at same rate as men with BSs in engineering.
• Michal:  More than half of the women in math are heading toward teaching.

 
Paradigms for Curricular Change

These paradigms were originally presented in the OPAS Steering Committee meeting and have been under discussion there and in the Standards, Courses, and Curricula (SCC) subcommittee as well.

• can we find a statistic on how many freshman engineering students need remedial work?  The expectation that kids are “calculus-ready” – for most that means having taken HS calculus;  college calc is taught at twice the speed of HS math.  Calculus itself is not necessarily a career obstacle (although it may be a degree obstacle).  For CS, it is discrete math, and it is also a washout path.  The problem is not the material and the prerequisites, it is the ability to absorb math material at that rate.
• Where did DK get his numbers – 70% HS grad, 40% reach college needing remedial ed (7/7/06 – since Jo can’t decipher her notes, inquiries are out.  Hopefully enlightenment is forthcoming!)
• Michal:  LIKING math is almost more important than having had a good grade.

Respectfully submitted, Jo Oshiro

For questions or information regarding this webpage, please email Jo Oshiro or call (503) 725.2910.