Tech Reviews First Year Of QEP

By Molly Moran

May 1, 2009

Virginia Tech held a Town Hall Meeting on Tuesday to discuss its first year experience of the Quality Enhancement Plan for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. 

"I'm real pleased to see so many of you here for this Town Hall Meeting," said Provost Mark McNamee as he introduced and welcomed everyone in attendance. "This may come as a shock to some of you but it was about two years ago that this same group started the process of talking about the QEP party implement plan brought by Virginia Tech.  Since that time we have had many opportunities for discussion.  We've had committees formed, we've had progress reports and implementation about how we can come together for a real serious effort to improve the quality of undergraduate education at Virginia Tech.  I am very pleased to see the level of engagement that faculty, staff, and our students have had in the process and it has been exactly what we have hoped for."

The QEP that Virginia Tech must research and employ has to abide by the accreditation standards of SACS.  The three main goals are to increase student learning in measurable ways, align with university mission and strategic plan and also convince SACS that Virginia Tech can do it. 

Bob Jones, the department head of Biological Sciences and chair of the QEP committee, who presented this strategic plan made it more detailed by finding out where our school needed the most help.  He said, "A couple of years ago we had several of you, many of you where I am today, who assessed where in the University we could make a strategic investment that would get back the most learning improvement.  Probably the resounding single most important thing was to focus on the first year experience for our undergraduates because we were missing some really important opportunities there."

Jones even went further to make this ambition more detailed by narrowing it to three smaller, yet chief goals.  The three goals are to encourage thoughtful academic planning, enhance research schools, and build intercultural knowledge and understanding. 

Jones said, "When we tied all these specific learning outlines and controls that you could get from these we found that there was a very ambitious plan that you could try to squeeze into just particular the first year program at a major institution."

The way they came up with making this plan happen was to follow the specific learning outcomes that were related back to an assessment rubric.  The learning outcomes were curiosity, motivation, independence, transfer and self-reflection. 

Jones presented four specific examples on how this opportunity could work through the Department of Biological Sciences, the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Hokie Horizons and Pamplin College of Business.

The timeline for this plan has already started this spring in trying to polish the plan to the best of their abilities with stakeholders.  The timeline continues throughout the next year and a half until fall of 2010 to bring it into full execution.

After Jones was finished with the presentation he took time to answers everyone's questions and gave answers to all of their feedback.

Jones and the rest of the QEP Implementation Committee would like feedback from the whole Virginia Tech community and would like people to visit www.sacs.vt.edu to provide their input.