Thoughts from our Campus Pastor
Innovation: A Particularly Divine Concept
“You are now an expert in your field,” were the words coming from my professor upon passing my comprehensive exams. After the internal echoing of that phase in my mind that offered self-congratulation, I became acutely aware of just how little I really do know. Echoes are most resounding in empty spaces! In a context of higher education, the nomenclature of terminal degrees presupposes that one can become an expert. Such mastery minimizes the perceived need to continue the process of learning or to consider new contexts, acquisition of new means of applying truth, and the curiosity of discovering new truth. All of us should position ourselves toward innovation.
If anyone would be considered an expert in their field, it would have been Elijah. 1 Kings 18 offers the story-line crescendo of Elijah’s mastery of the prophetic. A showdown with King Ahab and 400 prophets of Baal yielded a decisive victory of epoch proportion. However, the echoes of bravado quickly turned into echoes of fear sending Elijah into the pit of depression. Subsequently, God sent Elijah to the historically familiar location of Mount Horeb (likely, Mount Sinai) to witness the Almighty’s penchant toward innovation.
To the response of God’s direct question of, “What are you doing here, Elijah,” came a self-congratulating resume of faithfulness, commitment and self-pity. God directed Elijah to go out of the cave to experience His presence. Wind, earthquake and fire, were displayed in grandeur. However, these means of epiphany, though having precedent, were not selected for this moment in time. Rather, God’s chosen method of embodiment of divine presence was a whisper. Why? What message do you suppose God intended to make? Perhaps it was to demonstrate the variegated means of the Divine that confounds the wise.
Here is my application of this story to our personal challenge to be open to innovation: 1) Our expert resumes can easily distort reality and distract us from our purpose, 2) Truth is enacted in context, therefore, it must be re-realized through the years, 3) We are all truly novices with an embedded reliance on God for understanding, 4) Our disposition should be to perpetually scan God, people and ourselves for gospel opportunities.
A Word from the Provost
We are happy to welcome the WSCUC Reaffirmation team! Our WSCUC on-site team consists of: Helen J.D. Whippy, Provost, Chaminade University of Honolulu (Team Chair); Dr. Carole L. Huston, Associate Provost University of San Diego, ALO (Team Associate Chair); Dr. Shirley McGuire, Vice Provost, University of San Francisco, ALO; Michael C. Allen, Assistant Provost for Records and Research Fresno Pacific University, and Peter A. Michell, Vice President for Finance Saint Mary’s College of California (retired). The team will be accompanied by both our new WSCUC liaison, Dr. Tamela Hawley, and the former liaison, Dr. Melanie Booth. In addition, an observer from Mexico, Maria Eugenia Bolanos-Vargas, will join the visit in order to learn about the accreditation process.
Please join us on Thursday, March 2nd at 11:30am in Needham Chapel for the Exit Meeting with the Team and our Institution. We covet your prayers through this process!
News from Faculty Development
21 faculty applied for professional development funds for 2017 Spring/Summer. The Faculty Development Committee is pleased to announce that all applicants received funding, which totaled approximately $30,000.
With our new way to broaden the reach of the professional development funds, we can look forward to reading about upcoming visits to kinesiology, nursing, leadership, education, theatre, psychology, social concern, theological and music conferences on the IFD website.
Remaining Professional Development Funds
There are still funds remaining for 2017 Spring/Summer. The Faculty Development Committee has provided a way to take applications for ongoing professional development (outside the normal deadlines), until such time as the money has been spent. The committee will be taking rolling applications for Spring / Summer 2017, until such time as the final $14,000 in the professional development fund budget has been spent.
If you would like to inquire as to whether or not there are still funds available as of the time you are reading this update, please get in touch with Irene Israel in the Institute for Faculty Development.
Professional Development Updates
Thanks to those of you who attended the conference preview presentation by Naomi Kasa and Bonni Stachowiak on: Rethinking Assessment for Agency and Relevance. The presentation was on Monday, February 13, and we had around 20 faculty present. If you missed it, there’s a resources page available on Bonni’s Teaching in Higher Ed website.
Thanks, also, to those faculty who have shared about your professional development via the Institute for Faculty Development website. Here are some highlights from recent conferences and other pursuits of ongoing learning:
Mildred Yi, A Capital Investment
Julie Wilson, Using Technology to Engage Students
Derrick Rosenoir, Communication’s Civic Calling
Liz Powell, Diversity, An Imperative: Next Steps for Action
Diana Avans, Take-aways from the 2016 Western Society for Kinesiology and Wellness Conference
Alison English, Abigail Adams: Patriot, Educator, Dearest Friend, Women’s Advocate
Mary Wickman, Learning for Nursing and Non-Nursing Faculty from the California Colleges of Nursing Program
Pete Menjares, the Senior Director of the Institute for Faculty Development, also wrote a piece on: Why Christian Higher Education Needs Faculty Development More Than Ever, for the IFD blog.
News from Educational Technology
John Sim is here to help us get our students reading our class’ textbooks more often through his article called: Trying to Get Your Students to Read the Textbook? Canvas Can Help!
Bonni Stachowiak shares some of the features she’s noticing as particularly helpful in Canvas in her short video: Three Features in Canvas That Have Caught My Attention, Lately
Are you thinking about a conference that could transform the way you use Canvas in facilitating learning? Check out Canvas’ annual conference, being held July 25-27 in Keystone, Colorado. Bonni is considering attending, so get in touch with her, if you want to explore the possibilities. If you want to apply to present, the deadline is March 1, 2017. The early bird pricing ends March 31, 2017.
News from Academic Resource Center
Vanguard University’s Supplemental Instruction (SI) program has been invited to apply for certification through the International Center for Supplemental Instruction (ICSI), University of Missouri in Kansas City. There are Four Core requirements in order to become certified:
A current staff member must be trained by the ICSI. Tom Shirey, our Tutorial Center Coordinator, attended the 3-day training in the Fall of 2015.
VU’s SI program must require and provide intensive training at the beginning of the school year and throughout the year for all SI leaders. Our SI training took place over two 8-hour days in August and continues each Wednesday morning throughout the year.
VU’s SI program must include an intensive focus on SI Leaders planning their sessions and their sessions must be observed by a supervisor regularly. Our SI Leaders spend three to five hours each week planning their sessions, meeting with their professors, and attending the class for which they are leading. Each SI leader is observed at least three times per semester to ensure that procedures are being followed correctly for a productive SI session.
VU’s SI program must show that the GPAs of SI session attendees are higher than those who do not attend and, that there are fewer D, F and Withdrawal rates amongst attendees. Philip Newlin, our Research Analyst, has been instrumental in tracking attendance and course scores and has been able to show that there is a positive correlation.
We are doing everything that is required for certification, and once documentation of meeting these requirements has been submitted, we are confident that we will become certified. This means that Vanguard University will be recognized as an institute with an internationally certified SI program, and one of the few universities on the West Coast that is SI certified.
Tutorial Center
We have over 40 tutors who are tutoring in 50+ different subject areas and they are all excellent students in their fields. Among them, there are those tutors who go above and beyond the job requirements, so much so that we receive emails from their clients praising the time and effort that they put into ensuring their success. To honor their efforts, we began assigning a “Tutor of the Month” with our very first going to JaredSam Agtunong for his outstanding work ethic. JaredSam received a gift card to Samson’s Café and has his picture posted on the bulletin board in the Tutorial Center. Please join us in congratulating JaredSam on a job well done!
News from the Office of Institutional Research
In the Fall of 2016, the Office of Institutional Research began to administer all course evaluations through an online software, Evaluation KIT. This new system, integrated with the canvas learning management system, has allowed the evaluation results to be retrieved much more quickly when compared to the paper-based SIR. It has also saved the processing cost of paper-based evaluation and provided flexibility and customization to create our own questionnaire. The participation rate was relatively high (Please see the infograph).
Subsequently to the Fall course evaluations, a survey was administered in January 2017 to instructors and EvaluationKIT administrators to analyze the effectiveness and general perception of the new system. A majority of participants (88.09%) expressed comfortability with accessing their results. Moreover, 71.43% of the participants reported that accessing reports with this new system was more efficient than before. There were some negative responses regarding concerns of low response rates, lack of a qualitative component in reports, and nonoccurrence of some courses and the administrated survey. The majority of the negative responses represented a number of isolated issues specific to individual programs. Most of the issues have been modified for the 2017 evaluations to accommodate concerns raised in the Fall semester. For your information, in Spring 2017, we set up the survey to start 2 weeks before the last day of class and to end on the Friday of the final week for the semester-long traditional courses. The “Do it later” button will be removed one week before the survey end date. For the module-based courses, the survey will start 6 days before the last day and end one week after the last day of class. The “Do it later” button will be removed from 6 days before the survey end date.
We greatly appreciate your cooperation as we refine our new online course evaluation system. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions regarding the course evaluation at OfficeIR@vanguard.edu or Philip.newlin@vanguard.edu
Office of Institutional Research Located in Library, 2nd Floor 714.619.6457
News from Global Center for Women and Justice
Ensure Justice Conference
Friday, March 3, 2017 9AM | Newport Mesa Church
2017 Ensure Justice Conference
The Global Center will be hosting is annual Ensure Justice Conference this March 3-4, 2017. The Ensure Justice Conference is a two-day event focused on equipping teachers, law enforcement, students, and community members to protect and intervene for women and children at high-risk of exploitation and violence. This year’s theme is Build a Strong Child, emphasizing the role we all play in preventing children from being vulnerable. GCWJ invites experts from a variety of fields and disciplines to speak on current research and initiatives targeted at eliminating exploitation and violence. The Ensure Justice Conference represents a concerted effort to increase the academic presence of this institution and serves not only as an opportunity to learn, but also to network with like-minded academics, engage with pressing community issues, and contribute to a growing movement to end human trafficking and exploitation in Orange County and beyond.
The Apathy Effect
Friday, March 3, 2017 11AM | Newport Mesa Church
As part of the Ensure Justice Conference, GCWJ will be hosting the Apathy Effect Exhibit on campus. This exhibit immerses you in the stories of resilient young survivors of human trafficking from around the world. Explore original film, photography and artifacts, experience the stories of survivors, and join the movement to end it. For more information, visit www.ApathyEffect.com. A free walk through tour, the iEmpathize Apathy Effect exhibit, will be available in the room behind Newport Mesa Church. Group tours or self-guided tours available March 3-4!
Compassion Night
Friday, March 3, 2017 6:30PM | Newport Mesa Church
For its annual Compassion Night at Ensure Justice, the GCWJ will partner with The Salvation Army for the launch of BRAVE: the beginning of hope toward the end of human trafficking, the Salvation Army’s newest initiative for foster girls. The beginning of hope towards the end of human trafficking with speaker Danielle Strickland, the Western Territorial Social Justice Secretary for the Salvation Army, and other special guests. This is a free event and is open to all. Chapel credit is available to students.
News from the Library
Charging stations: The Library is very excited to announce it has purchased two charging stations that will soon serve our students who need quick charges of their phones and tablets. One will be located downstairs and another upstairs. A notice on the stand states “your device your responsibility.” This is a mock-up of the stand.
Graduate Study Room: The Library has made it a goal to make space for Graduate students to study within the library. During the past six months, library personnel have weeded periodicals and moved some of the remaining titles to the mezzanine area so that space can be provided in the former periodical room. We anticipate that the space will be ready for use after our spring break. The room will allow for several graduate students to study in a quieter setting.
Dr. Augustus “Gus” Cerillo collection: Former VU Provost and current Board of Trustees member, Dr. Cerillo, has donated his personal research on Pentecostalism and Pentecostal books to the Library. Many of the books were not owned by the Library and have been catalogued into the Pentecostal collection. The research folders are being processed within the Vanguard Archives.
Association of College Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference: Christine Cho, Systems Librarian and Michelle Schonken, Library Associate will be attending the biennual ACRL conference in Baltimore, MD, March 22-25, 2017.
Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) Annual Meeting: Pam Crenshaw, Christine Cho and Michelle Schonken will be attending Vendor Day on March 9 at Loyola Marymount University.
Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) was established in 1986 to develop resource-sharing among the libraries of private academic institutions in Southern California. Since its inception, SCELC has evolved to include all of California and is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation. SCELC represents:
109 member institutions
230+ affiliate institutions
Approximately 500,000 aggregate student population
Over $200,000,000 in library budgets
More than 21,430,000 volumes
SCELC libraries can choose from nearly 2,500 electronic resources through over 100 vendors. SCELC is one of the top five consortia in licensing volume in North America. SCELC is the reason we can afford the great research databases that we subscribe to.
News from the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion
The 2017 All Campus Climate Survey will launch NEXT WEEK! Data collection will take place March 1st – April 7th, with ReNew Partnerships and the Barna Group. This survey will provide vital information for next year’s strategic planning related to our Title IX and institutional diversity and inclusion training and workshops. Faculty, staff and students will have a chance to win 1 of 20 prizes upon survey completion and submission. Winners will be chosen every week. The earlier you submit your survey, the more chances you have to win! The first department/residence hall/club to complete the survey will win a catered lunch! Spread the word!
Prizes Include: Lunch vouchers, movie tickets, reserved parking, gift cards to local restaurants, Hydroflasks, a Webcam, Samson’s gift certificates, etc. You must complete and submit a survey to win!