Weber State University   

Botany

Results of Assessment

2007-2008 (submitted 06/09/08)

HISTORY:

During the 2000-2001 academic year the Department of Botany developed its first comprehensive Assessment Plan. This plan involved: (a) Rewriting a mission statement, (b) Identifying student learning outcomes, (c) Developing a curriculum grid wherein we address each course with respect to the outcomes emphasized in (b), (d) Developing an assessment plan wherein we identify how each learning outcome in (b) is to be assessed, when, and by whom, and (e) Beginning to gather data on assessment of these learning outcomes. On the basis of this exercise, not only did the department develop a comprehensive program for assessing student learning outcomes, but the curriculum was revised after reflection on what we wished our students to know, what skills they ought to have developed, and what values in the affective domain of development they ought to have developed upon graduation. This assessment plan continues to guide curriculum development in the department as we assess student learning outcomes on a regular basis. The major tool used to monitor progress in and to make an evaluation of the degree to which learning outcomes have been achieved is the Student Portfolio.

OVERVIEW:

The Botany Department Assessment Plan is now seven years old and during the last two academic years, an evaluation of its efficacy has been made by the department faculty. We continue to depend heavily upon departmental self-assessment along with the information gathered during graduating senior student exit interviews and information gathered during intensive portfolio summative assessments as the major means of measures of effectiveness. It is safe to say that the Student Portfolio remains the keystone of the student’s botanical experience at Weber State University and has gained the respect of almost all students and faculty. This is substantial progress in itself. This year, as a response to the efficacy study, a new course, Botany 4980  “Portfolio Summative Assessment”: (3 hrs) was taught for the first time with great success. This should go a long way to get absolute student buy-in for the portfolio process. Based upon exit interviews it is clear that some students feel that the amount of work to complete the portfolio is excessive for what they are getting out of it. This, fortunately, remains as a very small minority of majors who feel strongly about this.

Three major challenges continue to weigh heavily on our time and resources with the added frustration of not having much control over these factors. These challenges are: (1) under-prepared students coming to college with respect to certain important skills including critical thinking, problem-solving, writing, information gathering, and mathematical computation; (2) more students who place college studies at an ever lower priority due to complicated lives involving family and work obligations; and (3) increased emphasis upon undergraduate research with the concomitant need for research methodology development through an already crowded and taxing curriculum.

RESULTS:

Some of the program strengths, challenges and recommendations for future action made by the review team  (as they relate to assessment) are summarized below:

Strengths of Botany Department

1) The Botany Department is composed of excellent teachers, who have a genuine desire for the students to learn botany and love plants. In our private lunch and meetings with students, the visiting committee was stunned at the tremendous enthusiasm the students have for their botanical studies and for the remarkable esteem in which they hold the botany faculty. This small department offers a remarkable diversity of high quality courses while operating the greenhouse, maintaining a herbarium collection, and undertaking research. The faculty is collegial to each other and the university faculty at large. Dr. Bozniak is to be commended for assembling a remarkable staff.

2) The Botany Department is unique in Utah and one of the few strong Botany Departments in the nation. The department offers a solid undergraduate education in basic botany. Track A and B are distinct and prepare students with the knowledge and skills appropriate to the botany employment outlooks in Utah. The review committee recognizes the importance of not only maintaining this unique program, but seeing it develop and grow in the future.

3) The Department is highly efficient with very limited resources. Much of the material for class labs is grown in-house or collected in the area. Only those plants not easily grown or collected are purchased for class labs. We note that there is no botanical garden on campus, but that several students independently suggested the space south of the Science Building as a suitable site.

The herbarium at Weber State University is superbly curated and represents well the flora of northern Utah. It was pleasing to the visiting committee to note that the herbarium is contiguous to laboratory areas and the student lounge, facilitating easy exploration of plant diversity by students.

4) This is a student-friendly department. All of the Botany majors love this department. They feel that  students feels like that of an extended family. They appreciate that classes are scheduled to not conflict with other classes in the department and required classes in supporting departments. Most students felt the portfolio was a significant investment of time and effort but was worthwhile.

Challenges for Botany Department

1) Department visibility and marketing to high school students and general education students at the university continues to be a challenge. Lack of visibility negatively impacts department SCHs and the number of majors. This is not unique to the Botany Department at Weber State University, but is part of a national trend in plant biology departments. Students just do not know what botany is and what kinds of career opportunities are available to botany majors.

We note that Weber State University as a whole is doing relatively well compared to other Utah institutions in recruiting and mentoring Native Americans, Pacific islanders, and African Americans who compose 8 percent of the student body.  Notably absent, however, are Latin American students and those of Hispanic descent.  It is in these students’ interests and the interests of the State of Utah to find ways to encourage Hispanic students in the state to pursue higher education. We believe that Weber State University, which is surrounded by one of the largest and most vibrant Hispanic cultures in Utah, is ideally situated to explore new ways of mentoring and recruiting Hispanic students.  Given the prominence of herbal medicine and plants in general in Hispanic cultures, we believe that the WSU Botany Department may play a key role in addressing the imbalance of Hispanic students in Utah’s institutions of higher education.

2) The Botany Department has done an effective job of cobbling together equipment from various sources to develop effective teaching labs. However, the need for new teaching equipment outpaces resources. This is particularly true in the area of equipment for currently applied molecular biology and molecular genetics techniques. In addition, as the university moves toward increased research expectations of faculty, then additional resources will be required to obtain and maintain research quality equipment. The department has also reached limits in terms of space, particularly in terms of laboratory, greenhouse and herbarium space.  While the Botany Department has done a good job of maintaining current laboratory resources, more space and equipment are desperately needed.

3) The current semester schedule is a challenge for integrating field aspects of the taxonomy, ecology, and field botany courses. The spring semester is ending just as plants are beginning to flower in Utah.

4) The Department receives inadequate support from Facilities Management and Technology Support. This failure negatively impacts the ability of the faculty to teach students. Since this is the primary mission of the university, this problem is especially glaring. The Department also receives inadequate post-award support from the Office of Sponsored Programs. Faculty need assistance in accounting for grant expenses and disbursements.

5) Although some faculty have maintained strong research programs, in general faculty research has waned over the last decade. With current course loads and other duties there is little time for research, grant writing, or growth of the herbarium. This can have a negative impact on mentoring undergraduate students.

Recommendations for Change

1) The Department should consider methods to make its general education courses more competitive in the SCH market. Assuming that NUTR LS1020 is going to continue to be a GE course, then Botany will need to compete for students in the life science area. The Department should consider offering the Environment Appreciation and Plant in Human Affairs courses in formats that are appealing to students, such as on-line or hybrid courses. Currently the department offers Environment Appreciation at one high school in concurrent registration. An effort should be made to seek or develop additional high school biology teachers capable of delivering this course.

Other potential areas for increasing enrollment would be to seek an integrative M.S. degree in Criminal Justice or an M.S. in Ethnobotany. The Botany Department could contribute the forensic botany portion of a professional M.S. degree in forensic science. The professional M.S. degree in Ethnobotany would require a new position, which could potentially be funded by the plant-based medicine industry in Utah. Both degrees would be almost unique and increase the profile of and enrollment in the Department of Botany.

2) The Department does an excellent job teaching basic botany but needs to update its curriculum with current cellular and molecular techniques. These techniques have thoroughly penetrated plant science and are tools used by even the most field-oriented taxonomists and ecologists. A position with some dedicated research time that would drive the department into the future should be considered as a replacement for Dr. Bozniak when he retires next year.

Although we are loathe to increase the already staggering load of undergraduate courses offered by the department, we wonder if a team-taught introductory course in biology shared by the Departments of Botany, Microbiology, and Zoology might be a useful way to allow entering undergraduates to determine their own personal interests in biology. Perhaps this course could replace one of the current introductory courses for majors.  Furthermore, we are concerned that no single course in the WSU natural sciences focuses specifically on evolution. Although we are aware that societal resistance exists for the teaching of evolution, we note that Utah as a whole is far more progressive on this issue than say, Kansas or Florida, and that successful courses in evolution are currently taught at the University of Utah and Brigham Young University. As Theodius Dobzhansky said, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” We suggest that a senior level course team-taught by lecturers from Zoology, Geology, and Botany be offered in evolution.

3) The Department should find methods to channel the energy of Botany Club to increase department visibility and as a student recruiting tool. This could be through the development of on-campus gardens or off-campus presentations to elementary, junior high, high school and community groups. Perhaps the Botany Club could offer small prizes for science fair projects in botany, with students serving as judges.  We also think that the Botany Club might sponsor weekend field trips for plant collection and even longer expeditions to tropical areas. The Kampong, a garden in Coconut Grove, Florida, administered by the National Tropical Botanical Garden, has dormitories, laboratory space, and a superb living collection for students with faculty supervision.

4) Students seem anxious for more field experiences and the department may have to continue to experiment with summer field courses that will more closely fit student needs.

Additional Recommendations

1) The Department needs college or university support for marketing its program to potential majors and the community. The faculty are excellent teachers and scholars but they are not experts in recruiting, marketing, and development. This could be achieved by hiring a COS recruitment person, which perhaps could be an enthusiastic retired person, recent graduate, or homemaker. Either a volunteer or a paid employee would help advance marketing and recruitment for the department. Although initially filing a staff position seems like sacrificing a faculty position (which could be obviated if the position were funded by a grant from a local nutriceutical company), growing the college of science enrollments would in the long run increase the number of faculty, potentially for all departments.  The COS should also develop a 50 minute DVD of COS programs (including all departments) that could be distributed to all schools, appropriate for 8^th-12^th grades. Done well, this could excite students about both education and careers in sciences, and they could find out what Botany actually is about!

2) The Department needs better support from the academic support services on campus. The primary mission of the university is compromised when the faculty are not supported with adequate facilities and technology to do their jobs. This is particularly true for computer technology, powerpoint projection, and other audio visual support for undergraduate lectures. We note that the College of Education has a full-time technical person to ensure that audio visual needs of professors are fully met. The current system is not working and in effect wastes precious student and faculty time and adversely impacts student learning when projectors don’t work, screens fail to descend, bulbs blow in projectors, etc.  It would be more effective to have in-house support to accomplish this goal unless significant changes are made in the current way Facilities Management and Technology Support are operated.

3) Faculty with external grant-funded research projects should receive support for purchasing, bookkeeping, and other administrative grant activities.  This is expected for government grants in which an overhead fee is paid by the government to WSU. If these fees are insufficient, then WSU should renegotiate the overhead rate with NSF, NIH, DOE, USDA, and other government agencies.  The visiting committee finds that the current low-level of support offered by WSU to researchers is negatively impacting faculty incentives to apply for and obtain external funding and is negatively impacting the undergraduate mission of WSU.

BOTANY DEPARTMENT'S RESPONSE TO THE REVIEW TEAM REPORT

INTRODUCTION

It is important that the seriousness with which the Department of Botany takes the process of self-assessment be recognized by professionals from outside of our University. This the Program Review Team has noted in their introduction to the report. Of special note is the review team’s assessment of the role of Botany in the academy with which we strongly concur. This is especially important to our current status as a department that is at a critical minimum size for delivery of a high quality educational experience to the various publics which we serve. It is our hope that future expansion not be driven totally by some artificial quantitative measure of worth, such as SCHs generated or cost per graduate, but rather be driven by a sincere desire to develop a comprehensive program representing all major sub-disciplines  that would help market  botany to future student recruits. To a large extent, we must avoid the chicken and the egg problem, that is if we cannot develop the program unless we have a certain population of student majors, we will not have the students unless we have an attractive program for them.

While we obviously agree with all statements of strengths identified by the review team we would like to concentrate our responses to the challenges identified and the recommendations for change articulated in the report.

CHALLENGES FOR BOTANY DEPARTMENT

(1)  Several challenges described in the review need to be addressed not only at the department level but at the COS and university levels. These include recruitment, facilities, computing support, and faculty loads. Central administration ought to provide clarity and/or leadership on how to accommodate rising scholarship expectations for faculty, especially in smaller departments, given the increased emphasis on and faculty involvement with undergraduate research and service learning within the long standing WSU teaching load requirement. To deliver the full spectrum of courses in a small department almost always necessitates overload for each faculty in teaching (especially when mentoring of student research projects are involved) and service to the campus community. Current faculty have a great interest in each of the highlighted challenges identified by the review team but are somewhat reluctant to further increase workload.

Recruitment will need to be addressed by the COS as well as at the department level. We are prepared to entertain expanded opportunities for recruitment especially those involving our Botany Club. In this respect the club is underutilized.  Members could assist the faculty in taking programs to local schools to give students at all grade levels an opportunity to understand what Botany is and what one could do with a Botany degree. Perhaps the faculty advisor could be given some release time to coordinate such club activities that would likely involve preparations of media materials and lead short field experiences for grade school students on Saturdays. With respect to increasing the visibility of Botany on campus, the Botany Club could lead additional field trips besides the current ones the department leads to the Uinta Mountains and  Antelope Island. Club members could also partner with other department clubs to host open house activities and cooperate with the Ogden Nature Center to sponsor wildflower walks. The Natural History Museum offers a venue with high K-12 traffic. We have some connection to the cactus/succulent garden, but other displays would provide visibility. The last S4 meeting featured undergraduate research presentations. If undergraduates could give more of the presentations (like four undergraduates instead of a single speaker at a meeting), all departments could get more notice. These wouldn’t have to be just research presentations. They could include our greenhouse workers, the planetarium volunteers, the SCME and Science Fair students, various club officers, etc. describing what they do as undergraduates in COS. At our most recent exit interviews of graduating seniors, students brought up the idea of getting more “teaching” experience during their senior year.  At a strictly undergraduate institution, opportunities are somewhat limited but the faculty is entertaining the idea of involving more of our students in a few of our beginning laboratories. Getting the experience as part of a coordinated recruitment program is also being seriously contemplated. This is perhaps the answer to the review team’s recommendation that we, more aggressively, recruit within the regional Hispanic community.

A botanic garden, on campus, would greatly increase our visibility, but there are numerous problems associated with establishing one. 1. We would need a major donor to fund the installation of the garden, pay for maintenance, and pay a salary for a director. 2. The space suggested by the students is reserved for the second phase of the Science Lab building.  Granted, it has been a long time in coming, but if something else were to occupy that land before additional COS space was obtained (e.g., the Marriott Health Professions building), there would be serious morale repercussions in the college. Also, that space seems a bit small. If COS were to occupy MH, the entire expanse between SL and MH could become a botanic garden, providing high visibility for Botany and an attractive connection between the two buildings.

(2)  The review team says: “While the Botany Department has done a good job of maintaining current laboratory resources, more space and equipment are desperately needed.” The space issue, and to a great extent, the equipment issue are issues of concern to the entire College. We have some equipment, but we have not pushed hard for more in Plant Physiology and Plant Genetics because of the lack of enrollment in these courses that would use it. Plant Genetics and Plant Physiology have been cancelled frequently since the institution of the tracks options, so we could not see any point in spending limited resources on classes that basically do not exist most of the time. Also, as  noted by Dr. Harley, the genetics class needs to be revised if the lab portion is to be meaningful. She suggests revising Plant Genetics to become a 4 credit class with 3 hours of lecture and one 3 hour lab period per week. The current three credit version of the class is officially 2 hours of lecture and one 2 hour lab period per week. The laboratory work has become almost nonexistent for two main reasons: 1)  the laboratory period is not long enough for many activities 2)  the need to cover not just the “how to” and applications of plant genetic engineering but the various ethical and societal implications as well has cannibalized laboratory time to provide lecture and discussion time.

Equipment is slowly being added to the department but increased infusion of resources will be necessary if we are to keep pace with research demands. The Department of Botany will take seriously the recommendation that the review team makes regarding more aggressive efforts in concert with the Development Office to search for corporate support.

(3) The current semester schedule is a challenge for integrating field aspects of the taxonomy, ecology, and field botany courses. The spring semester is ending just as plants are beginning to flower in Utah. This is an issue we have been living with since semester conversion and the problems have been exacerbated this spring (08) which is a very late spring. Dr. Clark was able to find just a few living wildflowers and these only during final exam week. The idea of running a summer field camp has been discussed off and on for many years and we often reflect upon the attempt at such a program with very limited success during the decade of the 80s. One main concern about a summer field school is that it combines overloaded faculty with a low enrollment offering. This might be something students say they want, but they won’t take for a host of reasons. One possibility for a field experience during a suitable weather period might be to have students take the preparation part in Spring Semester, get a T grade, and go on the actual trip either in late May/early June or in August just before classes start/early Fall semester. Another possibility would be to augment enrollments of WSU students with students from all over the country. This presents some interesting challenges in marketing, given that reputations of field camps at field stations have taken many years to develop. Another viable opportunity was suggested in the review team report of involving our students in the Kampong, a garden in Coconut Grove, Florida, administered by the National Tropical Botanical Garden, which has dormitories, laboratory space, and a superb living collection for students to study with faculty supervision.

(4)  Waning research on the part of senior faculty makes their replacements of paramount importance. The department has not experienced much turnover, which in many respects, has been a good thing, however, this has meant paucity of opportunities to bring in fresh ideas with active researchers. The expectations of faculty have changed tremendously as the institution has grown and matured. At one time, some 3-4 decades ago, research was a dirty word. As faculty, who have been beaten up by this non-research culture of the past retire, replacement with new faculty, with a track record of research publications, becomes imperative.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CHANGE

(1)  Curricular Issues:

General Education & On-Line Opportunities

Plants in Human Affairs is the one class offered online. Our limited online presence could be hurting our visibility. Certainly Environment Appreciation would be our highest enrollment online class if we were to offer it - and if an enrollment cap was honored, would do the least damage to on campus sections. We have resisted moving in the direction of on-line versions of Environment Appreciation because we believe that most of the impact would be lost without impassioned contact with students. Plant Biology, which had been growing until this year, might leave us with a single on campus section per semester if it were offered online. There should be a general education review soon. The 1991 review was driven by the dual paradigms that there were too many GE classes and that only survey classes were suitable for science GE. The review associated with semester conversion brought us the Nutrition course as a Life Science General Education competitor. If the next GE review is saner, we might be able to address the two areas we had GEs for 20 yrs ago that people consistently wish we still offered (as long as the classes can meet the new LS requirements): Local Flora and a gardening class (turned into a majors class following the GE massacre of 1991). These are the types of GE classes that people will take.

Forensic Botany: Given the number of students in Criminal Justice programs at both the bachelors and masters levels, Forensic Botany is definitely a course we should offer, maybe in two versions. An upper division course could serve both their majors and ours and generate a good number of upper division SCHs. A lower division, general education version of the class would be a draw for the GE population and be a possible recruitment course for majors.

Evolution: We do not understand the statement in the review about there being “no single course” on evolution. If the statement is referring to a complete lack of an evolution course, it is wrong. Each life science department has its own; ours has been offered but not taught for awhile due to lack of enrollment. If the reviewers would like the three life science departments to team teach a single course instead of the discipline specific ones, that is a different issue. It presents the same issue for Botany as a biology GE course would. In theory, a General Education Biology course makes some sense, given that a considerable amount of duplication occurs in the present system. Such a biology class could be the innocent looking start of a Biology Department that ultimately becomes a pre-med mill. As faculty retire, their positions would go toward disciplines to support the pre-med program (note the initiation of a neuroscience undergrad program) rather than maintaining WSU’s current admirable breadth of coverage of the life sciences. Experience at the national level has shown that in 90% of the cases where Botany has been swept up into a large administrative unit of Biology, the discipline has been diminished.  Anything that places us on that slippery slope towards consolidation into a Biology Department will be resisted by this faculty. The reader should also keep in mind the uniqueness of the biology disciplines at WSU which the regents  should support because they support unique programs.  We are the only free-standing Botany program, currently, in the state of Utah.

Molecular Techniques: We agree with the review team that we need someone up on using molecular techniques to study botanical phenomena. Given that low turnover of faculty has worked against maintaining the most up-to-date, state of the science with respect to molecular techniques, upcoming replacements of retiring faculty will address this issue.

(2) A Graduate Program: We agree with the team’s suggestion that a Master’s program in Ethnobotany is a viable consideration. This would require a huge paradigm shift in which, not only the department but the COS and the university redefined itself and its priorities. Significant outside funding for such a venture is a very real possibility and we are prepared to work with the development office in seeking such resources as suggested by the review team’s report.

Graduate programs are another area where the institution has been less than helpful in providing guidelines as to the types of graduate programs that are desirable and addressing teaching loads and scholarly expectations of graduate faculty. The only standard for new graduate programs seems to be what the market will bear.  If the market will bear an Ethnobotany program, we’re in - as long as it can be done with the existing faculty and without affecting our undergraduate SCH production. Such a model will necessarily have to be changed. An Ethnomedicine or Ethnobotany Master’s degree program would certainly meet the need of a unique niche which we could carve out at WSU.

(3) Raising Money: It might be exciting to raise $500,000 a year from private donations but, as with recruitment of students, we must rely on professionals who specialize in such activities to do this for us or at least assist in significant ways. When time is of the essence, it is difficult to count on a great deal of enthusiasm to take on added assignments, even if we felt we had the expertise to do so.

(4)  Future faculty hires: Three faculty have mentioned retiring within the next five years. Just prior to semester conversion, we had reached a level of SCH productivity that we were preparing an argument for hiring one net new faculty. Since then, with the implementation of multiple sections of both face to face and on-line Nutrition classes, our SCHs have dropped and so has our rationale for adding net new faculty. The disciplines covered by the three people currently in eminent-retirement positions include Economic Botany, Ethnobotany, Taxonomy, Algology, Horticulture, and Soils. While we agree that we need someone up on using molecular techniques to study botanical phenomena, we need to decide which of these areas would be the best discipline for us to hire such a person in.  What we see in terms of replacements:

A. If we are serious about a masters program in Ethnobotany, an economic botany/ethnobotanist/medicinal plants person should be hired to fill Dr. Bozniak’s position.

B. For a while we have viewed the taxonomist position as the one to go for to hire someone with recent experience in molecular techniques.

C. That leaves the third position for either an algologist (who uses molecular techniques?) or a horticulture person who can cover Soils.

It is obvious that the Program Review Team, especially the outside reviewers, were convinced that the Department of Botany is doing the best we can with what we have. The suggestions that have emerged from our discussions with the review team during the on-campus visit as well as the report of the team, portend some exciting opportunities and challenges ahead. The main ingredient for this to come to fruition is institutional support.

b. During exit interviews of graduating seniors, a series of standard questions are asked so that comparisons may be made from one year to the next. These standard questions are as follows:

1. How long did your degree studies take?
    

2. What motivated you to choose Botany and how do you feel about having made that choice?
    

3. What did you find most useful and least useful in your program of studies?
    

4. What recommendations do you have that would make the Botany curriculum more useful to students whose specific interests in Botany match yours? To students with other specific interests within Botany?
    

5. How would you assess the advisement you received from all levels from the laboratory manager, to the professors, secretary, and advisement centers?
    

6. How well could you assess yourself with regard to the three areas of expected learning outcomes identified by the Department of Botany? Did the keeping of a portfolio assist your self-assessment?  If so, in what way?
    

7. What are your future short-term and long-range plans?
    

8. Are there any additional comments you wish to make?

All students reported that the program and the department were great, small in size which was attractive, personable with concerned faculty and staff that go the extra mile to assist students whenever they needed advice or help. Graduating students testified passionately that the environment in the department is inviting, inclusive, not intimidating, with extraordinary support for students, where everyone shows respect for others and everyone is treated as an equal. Students unanimously reported that this environment is at once empowering and nurturing while providing opportunities to learn and prepare well for the future whether that be graduate school or entering the job market. Students seem to embrace and take to heart the stories from past graduates who have secured jobs, they say, strictly on the basis of their portfolios. This serves as a strong incentive to continue to invest heavily into the portfolio preparation. There were some students that were less enthusiastic about the relationship of the portfolio’s value and the effort that goes into constructing it, especially the comprehension essay. Currently, however, there seem to be few alternatives that demonstrate that one knows and comprehends the field of plant biology.

c. Yet another year has passed where students and faculty were encouraged to see so many unfilled temporary and permanent positions for Botany-related disciplines, in both the public and private sector for which we had notices posted.  This portends great opportunities for our graduates. The challenge here is for us to get the word out so that prospective majors know this fact. Recruitment remains a major challenge for the plant sciences, not only at Weber State University, but across the nation.

d. Students continue to be impressed with the choice of three Tracks for the major. Discussion during exit interviews, however, continue to draw attention to the problem of reduced quantitative course requirements for Track B having a negative impact upon students who wish to get into graduate programs. It appears that graduate schools continue to emphasize two years of Chemistry, one year of Physics and Mathematics through calculus for entry into virtually any life science discipline at the advanced degree level.

e. Last year students reported unanimously that the range of courses offered by our small department was tremendously helpful in preparing them for the job-market. As they reported to the visiting program evaluation team, they seek more hands-on learning opportunities and suggestions have been made by the review team and responded to by the faculty.

f. The reader can see that, while the Department of Botany has responded to the recommendations of the Program Review Team’s Report, additional and specific plans for dealing with the recommendations will be attended to during this next academic year.

Mission Statement / Student Learning Outcomes / Curriculum Grid / Assessment Plan / Contact Person