I. Meeting called to order at 1:00. Present: Gerry Selter, Scot Rafkin, Dave Schwarz, Udeme Ndon, Richard Keady, Dennis Jaehne, Jerry Smith. Guests: June Lim, Assoc. Dir., Career Center; Donna Ziel, Interim Director, Student Outreach and Recruitment
II. Development of Careers Brochure. Guest June Lim from the Career Center advised the Forum on using career information as an outreach mechanism to recruit students into environment-related courses and majors. She affirmed the utility of the strategy, noting that this is currently a "buyer's market" for the students and that they are very interested in where they might end up, career wise, after college. She suggested several techniques for the Forum to consider:· developing a roster of career titlesThe Forum agreed to pursue these ideas in subsequent meetings and to forego the development of a separate career brochure for now. Instead, the Forum decided to put an additional statement in the current curricular brochure to refer students to career-related information on the Forum website. The Forum will investigate ways to gather this information, perhaps including hiring a student assistant.
· compiling and using success stories from alumni in various environment-related careers
· using testimonials of employers of such students
· developing an environment-related Career Panel to be held during Earth Week
· working with the Career Center to develop environment-related career handouts
· posting career information and useful links on the Forum websiteIII. Student Outreach Activities. Donna Ziel described a series of events that her office of Student Outreach and Recruitment produces and/or appears at. She affirmed the importance of selling the potentials of the various environment-related majors to both prospective students and parents. Her office is primarily charged with getting students to attend SJSU and facilitating their admission. SOAR is focused on those students who aren't here yet. There are 12 staff in the SOAR office and they recruit from 85 high schools and 10 community colleges in our service area. She pledged SOAR's assistance in carrying our brochure to the many recruitment fairs and events that they attend. In addition, she described some specific recruitment opportunities for
the Forum to consider:· Meetings of Transfer Center DirectorsThe Forum decided to pursue potential collaboration with SOAR at these events. We will make specific decisions at subsequent meetings. Prof. Rafkin will finalize the brochure and get another batch printed for the Nov. 11 event. Dean Selter will talk with the enrollment management committee about developing outreach partnerships. He also suggested producing and distributing an Environmental Forum pin to create an image and identity. He spoke of the popularity of such pins as desirable and
· College Fair recruitment circuit-not good use of faculty time, but good places for distribution of brochures (maybe 5000
brochures)
· Regional Recruitment Fairs in Spring (May: Mission College)
· Parent nights at high schools
· High school district events
· SJSU Campus Admission Fair: Sat., Nov. 11 in the Student Union. This event is set up to admit students on the spot. We could distribute 500 to 1000 brochures. The event has workshops on financial aid and student success skills as well as a campus tour. The show rate for such students appears to be 10 to 15 percent higher than the university average. There is presently no coordination with the academic units; however, Donna will check to see whether there might be space and/or time for us at the upcoming event.
· Coordination with SOAR's College Liasion staff
· Use of the data base developed from the recruitment effort. They get maybe 15 to 20 thousand names per year and could sort them by major, by high school or college, and produce lists and/or labels for us
· Addition of our information into college brochures, under the direction of Dea Nelson
· Conference of service area community college coordinators to increase transfer numbers. February. Donna will check whether we might have a presence there.
· Articulation meetings with the community college counselors and articulation officers
collectible for the science fair students. The Forum agreed to pursue the idea of a pin design contest with reward, and to investigate corporate sponsorship of the pin costs.IV. Outreach Brochure. Prof. Rafkin reviewed the changes he made in the newest version, based on suggestions from faculty. The Forum agreed to keep the program descriptions as he has them, except for removing "ecosystems" from Geology, and changing the Environmental Studies description as suggested by Prof. Rowntree. Prof. Ndon suggested, and the Forum agreed, that a generic title be added to clarify that the GE courses were available to students of any major. Prof. Rafkin will
check prices on printing the brochure (n=1000) on campus, perhaps even in color, in time for the Nov. 11 outreach meeting.V. Other Business. The Forum postponed discussion of the Forum/IREES merger until Prof. McNeil could attend. The Forum directed Chair Jaehne to schedule the next meeting accordingly. The Forum also agreed to drop the monitoring of the Environmental Health and Safety Program from its agenda pending developments that would make the Forum's continued involvement useful. The Forum discussed briefly the potentials of examining the number and dispositions of undeclared majors.
The Forum thanked June Lim and Donna Ziel for their helpful and informative visits to the meeting. The final meeting of the semester will be scheduled for late November or early December.
Meeting adjourned at 2:45 p.m.