Wisconsin Technical College System Board
310 Price Place, PO Box 7874
Madison, WI 53707
Richard Carpenter, President

State Certification Committee Meeting
December 4, 2002
Wisconsin Technical College System Office
Madison, Wisconsin

MINUTES

Present:
Janice Jablonski, Milwaukee Area Technical College
Nicholas Triscari, Milwaukee Area Technical College
Mary Peters, Chippewa Valley Technical College
Terry Simmons, Gateway Technical College
Sharon Spangberg, WTCS
Tom Grinde, WTCS
Val Smith, Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College
Mary Halberstadt, Gateway Technical College
Stephen Holden, Chippewa Valley Technical College
Larry Kind, Northcentral Technical College
Jill Gmeinder, Madison Area Technical College
Kitty Willkomm, Waukesha County Technical College


Approval of Minutes

Chairperson Mary Peters called the meeting to order at 9:00 a.m.  A motion was made by Terry Simmons, seconded by Jan Jablonski, to approve the minutes from the September 5, 2002, meeting. Motion carried.


Update on CIS Program Structural Changes

Mike Tokheim, Business programs consultant, gave a brief history of the growth and development of CIS programs within the technical college system over the last ten years.  There was tremendous growth up until one year or so ago.  Now there is a sense that growth has slowed down, and re-alignment of programs is more important.  A committee of district CIS instructors and supervisors was formed to discuss the direction and organization of programs and faculty within the Computer Information Systems area.   This committee has come up with several ideas for consolidating programs and re-aligning instructional areas.  This of course leads to the impact on certification for instructors.  State certification staff met with the committee to discuss potential impact on their proposals in terms of what would be able to be done with the limits of TCS 3 instructor certification.  During December this committee will further define its proposals and then bring them to the Business Deans group, the ISA and then back to this committee for final approval (most likely the May meeting).  The goal is to move to the future with three main areas:  Data security, enterprise computing and system analysis and design.  Questions raised:

Q1. What is the fallout/impact to other divisions who have CIS courses?  Answer: minor impact; districts have already struggled through this and are now collaborating across divisions

Q2. How will it affect the students and number of students?  Answer: enrollments won’t drop dramatically; public perception is that it is a growth field.  However, graduates are having a more difficult time finding related employment.  Some districts are capping enrollments in networking and computer security.  Districts will probably not add many staff.

Q3. What is the degree of alignment with 4-year programs? Is there flexibility in courses?  Answer:
The intent is not to inhibit change. Program numbers and titles are under scrutiny, not content.  Things related will be moved together

Q4. How many faculty are there currently?  Answer:  About 400 full time, 600-700 part time

No action was needed at this time on the proposals. Mike will return in May with a final proposal.


809 Social Science Discussion

Mary Ann Jackson, General Education Consultant, came to discuss the 809 document.  The General Ed Deans wish to change the 12 credits in the discipline being taught to 20 credits in the discipline.  Committee members presented pros and cons for going that direction. 

Pros:  The courses being taught are college level courses; they are expected to transfer to BS level program, and the faculty teaching should hold degrees one level above; having only 12 credits in the discipline teaching is too low; other states such as Minnesota require the MS degree

Cons: Loss of flexibility in hiring and assigning current instructors; it is difficult to find Economics instructors especially in rural campus areas, with even the 12 credits.  Districts are able to hire above the minimum certification requirements; however lack of consistency across the system could be viewed negatively.  The following options were identified and will be discussed at the next meeting:

  1. Five year certificate: Move Psychology and Sociology from 2nd bullet to 3rd bullet (requires 30 credits for Five Year)
  2. Both Provisional and Five year certificate: Move Psychology and Sociology from 2nd bullet to 3rd bullet (requires 20 credits and requires 30 credits for Five Year)
  3. Five-year certificate:  2nd bullet:  Change the minimum from 12 credits to 20 credits in the discipline being taught.  Eliminate the last sentence.
  4. Combine option 2 and 3 above.
  5. Provisional: 20 credits in discipline teaching and Five year certificate: 30 credits in discipline teaching.
  6. Provisional:  20 credits from any combination of two discipline areas, with a minimum of 12 in discipline taught; Five year certificate: 30 credits from any two discipline areas with minimum of 20 in discipline being taught
  7. Eliminate International Relations where mentioned.

It was decided that these options would be posted on the web site at the review and comment placeholder to allow time for additional comments as members thought that technical college staff might have understood the timeline for comment was until the end of January.  


Report from Instructional Services Administrators

Kathy Cullen was unavailable, and a wisline call will be scheduled after the holidays for her to give this report. Judy Neill gave an unofficial report on the work she has been involved with on the system wide health curriculum.


Education Requirement Course Competency Workgroup

Judy Neill, the project leader, gave a progress report on the work to date to review the competencies from Teaching Methods, Course Construction and Education Evaluation.  The workgroup has completed the bulk of the work and will be editing their recommendations through a final Wisline phone call to be held in January.  She handed out the proposed competencies and discussed highlights of the changes. The group was sensitive to the observation by many that the current competencies suggest more effort than a two credit course.  Some competencies were collapsed and others removed.  The workgroup maintained that each of the courses needs to contain a minimum of 90 hours of total learning effort.  They also “chunked” the competencies into 10-hour groupings to facilitate the development of 10-hour activities for renewal for part time approval instructors.  Judy will return with the final product to our February 26th meeting.

The workgroup will also meet again to produce model “below the line” online curriculum for each of the three requirements to be shared with all the WTCS colleges.  Judy also gave a demonstration of the newly developed website for the WTCS statewide curriculum bank.  The certification courses will be included on this curriculum bank. Judy also shared a draft Program design for WTCS Certification Requirements.  Committee members made numerous suggestions.  Judy will incorporate and bring another draft to the February meeting.


Occupational Experience Documents

David Brooks, Fire Services Consultant, presented changes made to the Fire Science documents and the addition of an Adult and Continuing education document for Fire Instructor I.  Information related to counting on-call status toward occupational experience was added to 30-503-1, 30-503-2, 10-503-1,10-503-2.  Language related to National Fire Protection Association standards was added to Section IV of the documents.   Members suggested adding “*may be able to teach some classes” to Fire Detection Suppression System Designer within the 10-503-1 Fire Science program and to both that job title and the Sprinkler System Designer title within the 10-503-2 Fire Protection Technician to be consistent with similar situations in documents where an individual with certain job titles would not be able to teach all courses.  A motion was made by Steve, seconded by Val, to accept the Fire Sciences documents as changed.  Motion carried.

Section IV of the Food Service documents was reviewed. The following language has been modified/added:

Instructors submitted for area certification must provide documentation of a 90% or above test score on the ServSafe course offered through the National Restaurant Association/Wisconsin Restaurant Association (NRA/WRA). An instructor who is course certified must meet this requirement if teaching any courses covering the topic of food preparation or food service sanitation. The renewal of this certification is done every 5 years and requires taking a 4 hour refresher course offered either through one of the technical colleges or through Wisconsin Restaurant Association. A link to Wisconsin Restaurant Association refresher course offerings is found at: www.wiscrest.org/careers/training/index.htm.

This was added to 30-302-1 School Service Assistant, 30-303-5 Food Service Aide, 31-303-1 Food Production Specialist, 31-303-2 Food Service Production, 10-316-1 Culinary Arts, 10-317-1 Culinary Management, and 10-318-1 Food Service Lodging and Tourism Management.  A motion was made by Nick, seconded by Mary Halberstadt,to approve the changes. Motion carried.


Guidelines

The few comments posted on Draft Guideline C were reviewed. Jan mentioned again that people might be thinking they had until the end of January to comment, and we should wait to act on it until after that time.  Sharon commented that Western and Indianhead ISA members commented they were OK with the proposal.  This guideline was proposed to maintain some consistency across the districts with what is being counted as appropriate credits. It was pointed out that this proposal may be considered in opposition to the 809 changes being discussed (ensuring credits taken are university level; an instructor should have a degree above the students) when this proposal allows for credits taken at the technical college level to enable an instructor to be certified in another area without ever taking a course at a university.  On the other hand, we allow students to use our credits for transfer to the universities, so why would not want those same courses to be counted by an instructor? Action was postponed until either a Wisline in January or the next meeting in February.


Miscellaneous Updates

Sharon gave a progress report on the pilot online course for #58.  Several enrollees have dropped the course for personal reasons, some are behind in their assignments, but the facilitator, Jim Begotka, feels the participants will be able to complete their course work.  He will attend the Feb. 26th meeting to give a final report on the course.  Sharon reviewed the evaluations from the fall meeting for certification officers and staff.  Overall, they were very positive. Shari Jacobson gave a report and demonstration on changes that have been made to the certification website based on the feedback received last fall at the meeting for certification staff. 

The next meeting will be the afternoon of February 26, 2003, and the morning of February 27, 2004.   Topics will include:

Review of the occupational experience documents up for third year review:

A motion was made by Terry, seconded by Nick, to adjourn the meeting.  Meeting adjourned at 2:30 p.m.