Category: News

The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently announced that Wichita State University has been selected as one of 29 institutions to participate in the 2022 Institute on ePortfolios.  

“This institute is an opportunity for us to work across disciplines and areas to integrate ePortfolios more intentionally into our campus and curriculum,” said Dr. Kimberly Engber, institute team member and dean of the Cohen Honors College.

The professional development opportunity aligns with Wichita State’s strategic priorities to be a leader in digital transformation and student-centered education. Engber said that several departments currently use portfolios to meet course or program requirements, but “we haven’t engaged in a campus-wide conversation about ePortfolio strategy.”

The goals of the ePortfolio initiative are to foster student self-authorship, demonstration of learning and development, and program assessment.

“We’re considering electronic portfolios as a capstone requirement for honors students, for example, but we don’t want to make this decision in isolation from national conversations about best practices or from initiatives on our own campus,” she said.

Students may use ePortfolios to collect their work for a course or select evidence from an applied experience. An electronic portfolio typically requires reflection as well, asking students to connect learning across courses or from a course assignment to a work environment. EPortfolios are designed to integrate learning and build personal and academic identities. Faculty design and evaluate assignments within electronic portfolio systems, and the university might sample work from electronic portfolios to support program-level assessment.

Wichita State’s ePortfolio team consists of Elaine Bernstorf and Cheyla Clawson-Chandler from the College of Fine Arts; Drs. Kimberly Engber and Kevin Harrison from the Cohen Honors College; Chelsea Redger-Marquardt from the College of Applied Studies and Honors College; Carolyn Speer from Instructional Resources; and John Watkins from the College of Engineering.

Ulrich Museum of Art Director Leslie Brothers has announced her resignation, effective Feb. 15.

Brothers has been the museum’s director since June 2018.

Her initiatives at the museum have been focused on connecting the museum more profoundly to the university’s strategic goals. She refreshed the marketing of the museum to promote the unification of all the communities it serves. More recently she worked with the university and the WSU Foundation to realize a vision for the creation of the Dr. Sam and Jacque Kouri Collection Study Center and Student Lounge located in the public space of the museum.

“I have enjoyed my time at the museum and the university. It has been a pleasure working with many wonderful colleagues across campus. The Ulrich will celebrate 50 years in 2024, and I, like so many before me, am honored to have been a part of former President Ahlberg and Dr. Martin H. Bush’s visionary legacy.”

“We are grateful to Leslie for her service to the university and visionary leadership while serving as director of the Ulrich Museum,” said Dr. Shirley Lefever, interim executive vice president and provost at Wichita State.

Brothers will join the Museum Campus in her hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin, as executive director.

The Ulrich Museum will soon begin a search for a new director.

Dr. Bobby Berry has been named assistant dean for diversity and outreach for the College of Applied Studies at Wichita State University.

In the newly created position, Berry will provide leadership for diversity and inclusion initiatives, oversee diversity and inclusion educational programs, and serve as a resource for students, faculty, staff, administration, and the community regarding diversity and inclusion matters. He will also provide leadership for the college’s recruitment and retention efforts.

The John A. See Innovation Award provides support entrepreneurs and innovators with prototype development and moving your idea forward. Awards typically range from $1,000 to $20,000. Past recipients have included prototype development, product testing, and marketing analysis.

All students and faculty are eligible to apply. Applications are open until Jan. 15, and will be awarded based on the order they are received.

During fall 2021, Wichita State launched its new 2025 Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Plan with the overarching goals of expanding enrollments to 17,000 students, increasing first to second-year retention rate to 75%, and closing the equity gap for underserved students. The success of the new plan is dependent on the contributions of everyone on campus.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see more steps departments can take to promote student success.

Strategy 3.3 Promote faculty dialogue and engagement around best practices for student success

• Promote early feedback and timely grading for students’ awareness of their academic performance (Student Early Alert System reports and early formative assignments).
  • Students may not be familiar with how to view their grades in Blackboard or how to see electronic comments on their graded work. Take a moment to provide instructions for students to track their progress and be responsive to your feedback.
  • Students need graded work before the class withdrawal deadline of April 1 to help them make informed decisions about their progress and likelihood of success in class.
• Encourage departments to establish metrics beyond the Student Perception of Teaching Effectiveness (SPTE) for quality instruction to use in annual evaluations.
  • The SPTE is an imperfect metric to assess instructional quality. Policy 4.31.IV.4.d allows departments to use multiple criteria to evaluate teaching.
• Support ongoing professional development for graduate teaching assistants (GTA) related to student retention.
  • Many of our graduate students will move on to become instructors of record for classes following graduation. We strengthen our graduate student’s ability to compete in the job market when we give them strong teaching skills, while also helping our current undergraduates be successful.
• Create a teaching partnership program that pairs junior and senior faculty to share teaching practices.

Shout-outs: WSU’s College of Applied Studies (CAS) has provided a robust faculty mentoring program for 10 years, with 25 mentor-mentee pairs this year. This program, coordinated by Dr. Jody Fiorini, CAS interim senior director of Faculty Development and department head brings the partners together monthly to engage in dialogue around teaching and research. The Office of Instructional Resources (OIR) collaborates with the Graduate School every semester to provide specialized GTA training sessions at the Academic Resources Conference (ARC) to help our GTA’s learn classroom management skills.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw 316-978-7130 or  carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu.

During fall 2021, Wichita State launched its new 2025 Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Plan with the overarching goals of expanding enrollments to 17,000 students, increasing first to second-year retention rate to 75%, and closing the equity gap for underserved students. The success of the new plan is dependent on the contributions of everyone on campus.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see if it aligns with work in your area.

Strategy 2.2 Promote, empower and measure coordinated marketing efforts and campaigns across the campus. Create a successful pipeline of messaging celebrating aspects of the life and work of the university.

• Ideas from the classroom:  Share creative and successful student projects with communication leaders on campus. Our students’ accomplishments should be celebrated. To do this, contact Trish.gandu@wichita.edu, Office of Strategic Communications marketing and advertising manager, Bobby.Gandu@wichita.edu Undergraduate Admissions assistant vice president, or nate.koch@wichita.edu WSU Foundation associate vice president for marketing and communication.
• Ideas beyond the classroom:  Participate in the annual Strategic Communications Seminar Feb. 3. Follow, share and retweet social media posts by campus offices to amplify their impact. View the master list of social media accounts 
• Shout-outs: There are a lot of departments on campus who already do a great job engaging in marketing and external outreach. For example, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) Twitter and ODI Instagram accounts do a great job celebrating different facets of identity on campus, the WSU University Libraries Facebook creates engaging throwback posts using items from Special Collections that celebrate our history and the Office of Admissions provides imaginative videos to the official Wichita State University TikTok.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw 316-978-7130 or carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu.

During fall 2021, Wichita State launched its new 2025 Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Plan with the overarching goals of expanding enrollments to 17,000 students, increasing first to second-year retention rate to 75%, and closing the equity gap for underserved students. The success of the new plan is dependent on the contributions of everyone on campus.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see if it aligns with work in your area.

Strategy 1.3: Promote greater campus connections with alumni and community supporters who can become ambassadors for the university with pride in and knowledge of the latest campus developments.

• Ideas for the classroom: Invite alumni or experts in the community to your class or to a department event to share their knowledge and connect them to current students. Share with alumni and community experts the newest developments in your program.
• Ideas beyond the classroom: Develop and distribute regular newsletters for your area that reach an external audience. Include promotion through social media. Invite alumni to meet with prospective students to share the value of their WSU experiences.
• Shout-out: The College of Health Professions has actively engaged its more than 9,000 alumni by creating a family photo album and bringing alumni back to campus for visits. 

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw at 316-978-3010 or carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu

During fall 2021, Wichita State celebrated an end to its first five-year strategic enrollment management plan (SEM). WSU completed 34 tactics in the original plan and established an additional 97 tactics as ongoing practices, successfully incorporating these initiatives as part of its regular processes. This lead to an increase of 7% in overall enrollment since 2016 despite the pandemic. 

Also in fall 2021, a new 2025 SEM Plan was launched with the overarching goals of expanding enrollments to 17,000 students, increasing the university’s first to second-year retention rate to 75%, and closing the equity gap for underserved students. The success of the new plan continues to be dependent on the contributions of everyone on campus.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw at 316-978-3010 or carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu.

Fall 2021 Student Perception of Teaching Effectiveness (SPTE) packets were mailed to each department Jan. 6.

The SPTE Request Form for spring 2022 pre-session courses is also now available. To access the form, fill out the online SPTE Request Form. Faculty members can also contact the Social Science Research Lab’s office at 316-978-3384.

The Shocker Neighborhood Coalition works to drive prosperity for our neighboring community. A collaboration among the SNC, WSU KSBDC, and Create Campaign have coordinated three free workshops in January.

• Marketing Mindset at noon on Jan. 13.
• Business Budgeting and Planning at noon on Jan. 18
• Hiring 101 at noon on Jan. 27

If you know a business in the neighborhood that could benefit, please share the information with them. The coalition is a collaborative effort and an all-hands-on deck approach.