The President's Community Partners for Advancement is a group of seven community leaders who assist the university with developing and growing its resources through community partnerships.

Dion McInnis, associate vice president in the Office of University Advancement, is managing the initiative. William A. Staples, university president, and McInnis work closely with the members to promote the university's mission and goals by connecting with interested individuals, corporations and foundations.

"Academic excellence, student development and community outreach are things that every university says they can do, but where UHCL differs is that we are talking about matching those words with the passion for doing it," McInnis said. "And, when you connect the passion with the words, then you have a much better project. Within those three frames of work, we have needs-people, programs and facilities. The initial program goals are not what we have to raise annually, but are tipping-point goals."

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Pilot program sets new standard
by Lynelle Ward
UHCLIDIAN STAFF
The School of Human Sciences and Humanities recently instituted a pilot program for new course-instructor evaluation forms.

The evaluations are a part of the faculty evaluation process, therefore, each school has a separate budget for the costs of assessment.

"Evaluations go to computing services and scantrons get scanned in and a report with all the results and averages are given to the associate dean for faculty evaluations," said Charlette Estevanes, secretary in the office of the School of Education.

A search for a new evaluation form for HSH started as a result of a task force recommendation. The task force was established because of faculty concerns about the validity of the current evaluation forms.

"[The faculty] questioned the validity and it was a home-grown form," said Margaret Snooks, professor of fitness and human performance. "There was some desire to see how well we were doing relative to other instructors in the country."

Sharon Hall, professor of behavioral sciences, and Kevin McNamara, professor of literature and American studies, developed a task force that researched options for new evaluation forms. After consideration, they decided not to develop the form internally because developing a questionnaire would need statistical data that would be very time consuming.

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