Kate Pluta of Bakersfield College

Bakersfield College

SLOs and Assessment: The department is working on its third-semester review of English 1a SLOs and assessment of the research paper rubric.

General Update: BC no longer uses an essay for placement. It relies on COMPASS and multiple measures. The department has revised its department final for English 50 (formerly English 1).

Gloria Dumler and David Moton co-edited their new text Navigating America: Information Competency and Research for the Twenty-First Century, published in March 2009.

The department held its first Meet & Greet for English Majors in the spring of 2009; Cindy Hubble is helping set up an English Majors Club.

Retirement: Dr. Nancy Edwards retired after forty years of service.

New hires: Wesley Sims was hired for fall of 2009 in a tenure-track position. Wes just completed his doctorate, defending his dissertation this summer. Neal Stanifer was hired on a one-year temporary position.

Cerro Coso Community College

The communications department is working to add the "learning and self-efficacy skills" recommended by the Basic Skills Committee into all of its developmental composition and reading courses. We will have these added to all course outlines by the end of this semester. We are also working on offering ESL courses in the Fall of 2010. As a department, we agree that we are behind where we need to be regarding ESL and that offering these courses is essential to our ESL community members. We have faculty attending ESL conferences and meeting with ESL departments at other institutions in order to gain information and improve our own course offerings.

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