Wisconsin Technical College System Board
310 Price Place, PO Box 7874
Madison, WI 53707
Edward Chin, State Director
M I N U T E S
State Certification Committee Meeting
May 4, 2001
Wisconsin Technical College System Board Foundation Office
Waunakee, Wisconsin
Present:
Absent:
Chairperson Karen Lawlor called the meeting to order at 8:30 AM. Sharon announced that Reba McColley has been promoted to Certification Officer at Lakeshore Technical College and will therefore be resigning as support service representative to the Committee. Sharon also indicated Reba thanked the Committee members for the opportunity to serve on the Committee. Members discussed a possible replacement, and recommended either Bonnie Pratesi or Mary Halberstadt.
A motion was made by William Barribeau and seconded by Mary Peters to approve the minutes of the March 2, 2001 meeting as submitted. Minutes were approved.
Mary Ann Jackson gave an update on the work to revise the academic requirements for certification for Adult Basic Education and English as a Second Language. What started out as a simple process to clarify the language within the 850 Certification document, has become a more complicated undertaking. It is difficult to achieve consensus on any changes. The plan now is: April/May: Gather input from the national discussion related to Massachusetts’s ABE certification development process; June/July: Bring together a group of deans and faculty to discuss the changes recommended by the ad hoc committee a few months ago. They can revise those changes and set forth any new recommendations. August: Summer meeting of the Deans of Basic Education: final review/revision of the recommendations. September: Final recommendations to this Committee. Mark asked what are the areas of concern? One thing that seems to be problematic is ensuring that instructors, who have a subject area degree vs. Elementary Ed., seem to be coming with less than 6 credits of reading course work. Mark and Kitty are still interested in being involved in the future discussions. Jan raised the point that she has seen potential candidates for instructors coming with a BS in Bilingual Education. She views this as more of a method of instruction, not necessarily as the appropriate academic background for 850. Kitty mentioned that UWM has an advanced certificate in Adult Education/ESL that is an additional year beyond a Bachelors Degree, and this should be acceptable.
The most recent version of the Guideline was reviewed. The language is still somewhat unclear. We don’t want the unique criteria to be used in place of alternative criteria required by other agencies and governing bodies. Changing the format of the document to a grid-style was discussed, but later retracted. Karen and Sharon will work on finalizing the draft, and then sending it back to the Committee members for final approval. The document will be official as of June 1, 2001, and retroactive if we do not finish the language changes by then.
The following documents were reviewed: 50-423-1 Millwright, 31-512-1 Surgical Technician, 10-605-1 Electronics, 10-662-1 Electrical Engineering Technology and 660 Electronics Foundation. An extensive discussion was held related to the 660 Electronics Foundation. Many questions were raised related to this being a new concept. What, if anything is being gained by using this idea? How does this impact our guidelines related to Occupational Specific (Common Core) courses and Occupational Support courses? What is the difference between the terms "Foundation" and "Core"? It was decided to table this item until the next meeting, when Sherman Ansell would be available to answer questions. The Committee requested a "before and after" example so that they could visualize what the gain would be if this is implemented. Also, this would need to be timed for course rollover. Another comment for the 660 document: if utilized, the instructional areas should be in numeric order and the titles written out. Also, should 402 be included? On the 662 document, it was suggested that we add a hotlink to the Website for the ABET. Sharon asked for the Committee’s help on rewording the Section IV language within the shell for the Appropriate Occupational Experience Documents. It seems that some district staff are interpreting the language under that section to mean that related documentation does not have to be submitted to the State Board. It was recommended to eliminate the language "These are not WTCSB certification requirements." A motion was made by Jan Jablonski, seconded by Mark Kearns to approve the documents as discussed, excluding 660. Motion carried.
Sharon reported that the official letter from Dr. Slick endorsing the arrangement with the Technical College for offering Command Spanish has finally been received. The draft Guideline 59 was reviewed. It was suggested that language be added that indicates Command Spanish is only offered as Adult and Continuing Education Courses. Also, establishing a hotlink under item 5 of the Guideline to the Command Spanish website would be good. It was suggested that a reference to Guideline 59 and perhaps Guideline 49 be added to the 802 Appropriate Academic Preparation Document, and language indicating 802 instructors can teach Command Spanish. Bill Barribeau made a motion, seconded by Kitty Willkomm to approve Guideline 59 as amended. Motion carried.
Mary Peters brought forth some suggestions from her local Certification Committee. Several language changes were made, including being consistent with the word "requirement" vs."expectation or expected". Changes will be incorporated. Bill Barribeau made a motion, seconded by Mark Kearns to approve Guideline 13 with the modifications suggested. Motion Carried.
Karen led the discussion on how to review the Guidelines. She indicated that after studying them, she found that 44 are five or more years old, some are outdated code transition Guidelines, and that approximately 14 of the 58 appear to need changes. She proposed that we go through a series of reviews at the next meetings, perhaps covering 10 or 12 per meeting. Committee members would need to do their review of them ahead of the meeting. She feels we could exclude looking at #30, 33, 40, 41, 46, 49, 50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57 and 58. This plan was agreed upon and we will review # 1-12 at the next meeting.
John Hamilton gave a report on the plan of work for the Instructional Services Administrators work. He indicated that ten of the members of the group serve in liaison roles to a variety of other groups, just as he serves as liaison to certification. ISA is working on three areas: staff development, curriculum and instruction and technology. They are very interested in the Certification Committee’s work on Guideline 49 and Guideline 13, and feel these changes toward being more flexible are much needed. Their message to this group is to please continue this kind of work. John shared the discussion Ed Chin had with our group with ISA. ISA supports the philosophical basis for certification, that it is meant to serve as a threshold, and overall it has worked well for our system. It appears there are members of the President’s group who would like the local institutions to have control over what guidelines they would use for certification. This idea has not reached the agenda of their group. The unions were added to our Committee during the last code change, and this has been beneficial. ISA would also like to promote the message that certification is the minimum standard for staff development and professional growth. They encourage the development of On-line certification courses and would like to see the upgrading of the curriculum for some of the courses, such as the philosophy of VTAE. They are interested in the concept of a life-long learning transcript or portfolio for staff, and the natural place to house this would be within certification. Mary Peters commented that if changes need to be made to Banner or other systems to accommodate this idea; that it would be good to do that now. Jan expressed concern over whether or not it is certification’s obligation to track all the professional development activity of an employee? This could be a tremendous task in a district the size of Milwaukee. John was asked if the minutes of the ISA meetings could be posted on a Website or on our Webboard? He will look into that.
Karen led the discussion on this concept. This idea was generated by State Board staff, and is being considered as part of the certification database redesign project. Some program consultants who have rather non-similar programs within an instructional area have been reluctant to area certify some instructors. Instructional areas 510, 107 and 605 come to mind. It then becomes necessary to course by course certify people, which can become cumbersome. The idea would be to offer an additional 6-digit program certification option in addition to the current 3-digit area certification and course certification. It would be another option. Committee members felt there were many things to consider before making this change. Much more than just certification would be impacted. It was felt that this might just be another band-aid fix to the broader taxonomy issue. There was concern for loss of local flexibility in making assignments. The group is unclear if enough would be gained over what might be lost, and would need to study the impact before reaching a firm conclusion. The preference is to rather use new instructional area numbers to segregate out the dissimilar programs.
Sharon indicated a change was made to reflect that the 2000 hours of industry certifications is the maximum number of hours that can be applied towards work experience. It was decided that this should be a stand-alone Guideline, thus it will be Guideline 60. A reference needs to be made to it within Guideline 46 as well. John Hamilton made a motion, seconded by Bill Barribeau to approve this new Guideline. Motion carried.
Sharon reported on progress to date on this project.A small work-group has been put together to write a project proposal to the State Board to develop Course # 58 and #69 for On-line delivery. Northcentral Technical College has agreed to be the fiscal agent for the project. We hope to work on the courses this summer. A significant activity will be to develop the process/procedure for statewide utilization of the on-line courses. It was suggested to gather input from the current facilitators of these courses. Also, it would be good to put the district summary chart of on-line courses on the Website.
It was decided to run a fall workshop in conjunction with the next meeting. Tentative dates were set for September 25th for the meeting, and September 26th for the workshop. Future topics for the Committee Meeting were identified as:
1. 850 Document
2. Occupational Experience Document 660
3. Web Board Use and Training
4. Guidelines 1-12 and others referenced
5. Review of Ed. requirement curriculum for #51, #58, and #69
6. Certification Database input (adding 6 digit program number)
7. New and emerging CIS occupations
8. Minority Recruitment Survey results
1. Web Board-Definition, use, access, notification
2. Introduce consultants
3. Training - Certification definitions
4. Guidelines-new #49, #61, #62, Modified #13
5. Small group discussion on other guideline modifications
6. Certification database redesign
7. Topics for wislines
8. On-line Course project
9. Minority survey
10. 850?
11. Staff Accounting changes
12. Report out on results of last year's brainstorming session
Bill Barribeau made a motion, seconded by Mark Kearns to adjourn the meeting. Meeting adjourned at 1:50PM