SACS :: QEP :: Planning

The QEP development process afforded UT Arlington the opportunity to open a dialogue and to ask the colleges and schools, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, and students to explain what a meaningful learning experience is for them. The galvanizing questions of “What kind of educational experience do we want our students to have?” and “What do we want our students to learn?” focused the attention of the academic community for more than a year. This process of identification of a theme for the QEP began with the strategic conversations between the President, Provost, and the faculty in the fall of 2004. These strategic conversations produced seven potential themes for the QEP. These themes were presented to the faculty for ranking via an on-line survey during the fall 2005 semester. Four topics that emerged from the survey (Communications Skills, Applied Learning, Student Engagement, and Undergraduate Research) were brought to two open faculty focus groups and then finally to a third faculty focus group specifically for Faculty Senate representatives.

Also during the fall 2005, the QEP Coordinator met with the Faculty Senate, Undergraduate Assembly, Deans Council, and Student Congress. In addition, she met with faculty in the Schools of Nursing, Architecture, and Social Work, and the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Education, as well as the College of Science Department Chairs. The other units (Honors, Engineering, SUPA, COBA, and the Development Board) each sent faculty representatives to the faculty focus groups. Drawing on the collective feedback received from these groups, an important point raised at the initial strategic planning conversations was reaffirmed: while each of the possible themes (Communications Skills, Applied Learning, Student Engagement, and Undergraduate Research) was important to UT Arlington’s academic community, we could not afford to sacrifice the desired student learning outcome of promoting thinking skills by focusing on too narrow of an approach. Recommendations from these focus groups were then presented to the Reaffirmation Leadership Team for consideration. This inclusive process led to the identification of “Active Learning” as the theme for UT Arlington’s Quality Enhancement Plan.

PLANNING