This year presented a new challenge, and as the year comes to an end, another challenge has presented itself.

The challenge that came crashing in last summer and permeated the year was the move to BANNER and Degree Works (for advising).  A very practical issue with the conversion to Banner is our ability to count and track majors.  In the old Legacy system, it was easy to do a report of both official majors and unofficial majors (and minors too) on the 12th class day.  Official majors were those that had signed a declaration of major form and unofficial majors were those that had not.  The 12th class day is the official "census" day for the semester.  In the Legacy system, a student could change their unofficial major online at any time.

With BANNER, students can indicate a possible major when they first apply to the University, but after that they cannot change it online.  They must fill out a paper form.  This particularly impacts forensic chemistry majors.  As incoming freshmen, many of the students think that all forensic topics must reside in the College of Criminal Justice, so they indicate that they are CRIJ majors.  This leads to a decrease in the apparent number of forensic chemistry majors especially at the freshman level.

In the fall semester of 2011, the reporting aspect of BANNER (COGNOS) wasn't in place by the 12th class day.  In fact, it wasn't really in place at the end of the fall semester.  This means that we do not have 12th class day figures for majors.  When the report is run after the 12th class day, the current (at whatever point the report is run) data are used, so if a student changes their major from some type of chemistry major to something else, they would not be counted.  Of course, if they change to a chemistry major, they would be counted.  Typically, however, we have considerably more students changing from chemistry to something else.

For the past five fall semesters, number of majors in chemistry and forensic chemistry were:  2007, 80 chemists, 159 forensic chemists (239 total); 2008, 88 chemists, 169 forensic chemists (257 total); 2009, 102 chemists, 177 forensic chemists (279 total); 2010, 108 chemists, 214 forensic chemists (322 total); and 2011, 110 chemists, 154 forensic chemists (264 total).  Is the drop from 2010 to 2011 real?  The spring data helps (for the past 5 years as well):  2008, 79 chemists, 136 forensic chemists (215 total); 2009, 79 chemists, 141 forensic chemists, (220 total); 2010, 95 chemists, 163 forensic chemists (258 total); 2011, 95 chemists, 188 forensic chemists (283 total); and 2012, 105 chemists, 201 forensic chemists (306 total).  Thus we can tell that the apparent fall 2011 drop in majors is most likely a problem with when the data is collected--end of term versus 12th class day, and that, in general, our enrollments are still growing.

Not only is this difficulty related to the number of majors, it also relates to the identification of chemistry and forensic chemistry majors in our courses.  This is an issue particularly for general chemistry and organic chemistry where our assessments target these majors.

Hopefully the COGNOS reporting for majors will no longer be a problem, and the fall 2011 major numbers are an aberration.

The conversion to BANNER also caused issues with course prerequisites and the enforcement of those prerequisites.  The legacy system rosters would flag students who did not meet the prerequisites.  The BANNER system does not, which makes it harder to check to make sure that students who do not meet the prerequisites are removed from the course.

The change that is looming large in the summer of 2012 is the revision of the core curriculum.

With the changes in databases in the past year, and the absence of data for some of the organic results, definite conclusions for the past year's data are hard to reach.  The best thing for us to do is to assess the situation on an ongoing basis, and try to increase participation in the general chemistry ACS exam.

In regard to the general chemistry test, we contacted students multiple times about the exam which resulted in the lowest turnout yet (no one took the test in the fall).  We followed up by asking students why and got an anecdotal response that more opportunities to take the exam would help.

We collected more complete data for the organic chemistry classes.

We raised the criterion from 75% to 80% for instrumental analysis.

We continue to assess the situation in physical chemistry.

We modified the student evaluation forms for seminar, making it possible for students to preserve their anonymity in making comments about others.

In order to gather more data we will offer the ACS exam over general chemistry at two different times in the fall semester.  Depending upon these results, we may do the same in the spring semester.

In the area of organic chemistry, we will monitor student performance on the standardized final and check instructor correlations.  It may be appropriate to shift instructors.

In the area of instrumental analysis, we will monitor student performance through another cycle and see if raising the criterion is appropriate.

We will continue to monitor student progress in physical chemistry.

For the seminar, sample critiques and comments will be presented to students in hopes that more informative comments can be elicited.