From OPAS Diversity Wiki

The Diversity Committee met by Audio Conference from 3:30 - 5:00.

Attending: Eda Davis-Butts (OSU/SMILE), Wendy Powless (OIT), Gayle Yamasaki (OIT), Don Kirkwood (N. Salem HS), Ivan Lumala (Microsoft), Jo Oshiro (OUS/OPAS)

Contents 1 Update on the Steering & Other Committees 2 OPAS Diversity wiki Organization and Tutorial 3 Project Status 4 AIs - Resources Mentioned on May 11, not yet in the Table - Please add them 5 Next Meeting

Update on the Steering & Other Committees

Jo summarized the most recent Steering Committee activity:

• The OPAS Vision Statement is "All Oregonians have the opportunity to explore, choose, and successfully pursue engineering or applied science as their field of study and career, thereby helping Oregon's industries contribute to state economic needs, and innovate and prosper in the global economy."
• The Steering Committee and the Standards, Courses, and Curricula subcommittee have been discussing Paradigms for Curricular Change.
  • 1. Academic Enhancement - more students in and through IB/AP level courses
  • 2. Technical Enhancement - more students in and through PTE and applied courses
  • 3. Redesign - change current curricula/ standards to include engineering problem solving, inquiry- and project-based learning.

The Steering Committee is using these models as a lens to focus and prioritize their work. These models are extensible throughout elementary education but are especially relevant to High School and Middle School. These models have different timelines, target groups, and might be flavored or combined in various ways.

• The Steering Committee is discussing subcommittee morphology, perhaps using the lens of "how" and "what". Which committees are addressing "how"? Which "what"? Some might start with What and move to How ...
• AI: Eda would appreciate further discussion, reconnection, calibration with the Steering Committee and other subcommittees; she and Jo will continue this discussion elsewhere.

• The Steering Committee is discussing a possible mini-summit in the September timeframe; this will probably take the form of an extended working session or mini-retreat rather than a summit forum as took place in September 2005.
  • Ivan suggests this start out with a 2-4 hour working session of the subcommittees.
  • Eda sees the need to reconnect and re-focus and really likes the face-to-face.
  • The Diversity subcommittee likes the September-October timeframe.

OPAS Diversity wiki Organization and Tutorial

• Jo led the group through a tutorial of the wiki. The group decided:
  • Committee members like the table format for the resources; the list format will be removed.
  • We will maintain one article page for each resource. The goal is to put a short abstract of the resource on the article page, and use the discussion page for discussion.
  • Committee members will work on the wiki and provide Jo with feedback. We are in pilot mode and very open to change. If we can make this work our conflicting schedules will no longer be such a great barrier to progress and productivity.
  • AI Jo -
    • fill in the Editing help page (link from the bottom of any edit page)
    • fill out the Help page (link from the navigation bar at the left of any page)
    • remove the Mediawiki User's Guide link from the main page as it is not very useful to most users. Done 6/13/06
    • put on a link back to the OPAS Diversity Subcommittee webpage Done 6/13/06
    • set up the Community Portal to link with the minutes/notes Done 6/13/06; when the notes have stabilized, they'll be copied to the OPAS Diversity Subcommittee webpage.

Project Status

• Reporting on the progress of the Best Practices Guide was set aside for now; we hope to see a lot of action in the near future now that this project is wiki-based.

• Ginnie Lo suggested we consider 1 or 2 other short-term do-able projects; committee members were requested to think on this for next time.

AIs - Resources Mentioned on May 11, not yet in the Table - Please add them

• AI - Eda's Resources
  • Article - “A 10 year assessment …”
  • Northwest Girls Collaborative Project (NWGCP) – resource list
  • Gender and Science Digital Library – best practices, test, instructional materials, gamut of things that support STEM participation
  • Virtual of Library of Resources of Engineering; comes through as a mentoring project . This site, while generally good, has a bad link to the National Association of College Directors that leads into some really icky stuff.
  • Journal of STEM education, Nov/Dec 2005 – will send pdf; 10 year longitudinal study
  • Center for Diversity in Engineering Accountability Report – not around best practices; frames the work from a different state.
  • Science Gender and After School Resources Site, a program resource
• AI - Don's Resources
  • Computer Science Teacher’s Association link
  • please review Rochefort's "Everything I Know ..." paper, thanks
• AI - Wendy & Gayle's Resources
  • 2 or 3 items, unspecified
  • a paper about the messages young girls hear about engineering.
• AI - Ivan
  • please review "Minorities in Engineering ..." the first entry in the table, thanks
• AI - Shawna
  • • please review "Boys are No Match ..." from the table, thanks

Next Meeting

• The next meeting is Monday August 14 from 1:30 - 3:30 in the SMILE conference room in Corvallis. Please attend in person if at all possible. Ivan will not be available until early September.