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Accreditation

The Black Ink Project

Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges requires each college seeking reaffirmation to create a Quality Enhancement Plan. The QEP is a five-year plan to improve student learning outcomes, have an institutional budget, and affect a broad section of Morehouse. A college is expected to approach the QEP with a different mindset than the Compliance Certification Report. The CCR is concerned with compliance. The QEP is concerned with innovation. SACSCOC is less concerned with the success of the QEP than the lessons learned from the act of innovation.  We chose to focus in QEP on improving writing skills by using topics included in Black life, history, and culture. Read more about our QEP plan, The Black Ink Project and its Communicating Effectively Rubric.

Student Improvement

Writing is a critical skill that goes beyond demonstrating proficiency with the mechanics and structure of writing. Writing facilitates critical thinking. Writing is a means to assess and communicate what has been learned. Our Quality Enhancement Plan is intended to improve the writing skills of lower and upper-division students through teaching writing skills in:

  1. English Composition 101 and 102;
  2. in the Freshman Year Experience, the General Education Curriculum, the Black life, history, and culture, designated writing-intensive course in academic majors, and courses and topics presented in Crown Forum;
  3. providing faculty workshops designed to teach faculty the techniques identified as the best practices to teach and assess writing, and
  4. assigning students to the Writing Lab for one on one tutoring to develop and improve writing.

 

Skill in writing will be demonstrated by learning outcomes that will be assessed through evaluation of written artifacts collected from each of the curricula components listed above.   

Progress towards achieving the QEP goals and meeting student learning outcomes will be assessed by the Office of Data Analytics, Institutional Research and Effectiveness, working with the QEP director, using the QEP writing rubric. To manage the implementation of the plan and assure support for all QEP activities, the provost will appoint an advisory board and a QEP director who will report to the provost. 

FACULTY WRITING WORKSHOPS AND SUPPORT FOR TEACHING WRITING

Faculty workshops will be offered four times each year and during each summer. They will be recorded for future use. Summer workshop participants will meet for two days while those in fall and spring semester workshops will meet on one scheduled day. Each workshop day will include discussion of a variety of topics along with specific strategies for teaching writing in:

  1. English Composition 101 and 102;
  2. Freshman Year Experience,
  3. the General Education Curriculum, and
  4. the Black, life, history and culture courses, followed by assignments for the next session’s activities.

 

Active learning, including actually doing the kinds of writing being taught, comprises a key component of the workshops. In this way, faculty are expected to learn how to use writing in their classrooms and in terms of specific writing assignments, as well as why and how writing works to promote student learning.

The goal of the Faculty Writing Workshops is to improve the quality of writing instruction across the curriculum. Upon completion of the workshops, faculty will be able to use teaching techniques that are immediately transferrable to their classrooms. Faculty members who participate in a workshop learn about the

  1. Pedagogy of writing,
  2. Designing effective writing assignments;
  3. Writing in disciplines;
  4. Strategies for responding to and evaluating student writing;
  5. Designing writing assignments that motivate Critical Thinking/Reading; and
  6. Function of student conferences. 

Advisory board

Our QEP advisory board provides support and advice to the QEP director and oversees the implementation of the QEP. Members of the board include the QEP director, faculty members from academic areas across campus, and the Office of Data Analytics, Institutional Research and Effectiveness. They are committed to enhancing the writing experiences of our students.

  • Nathaniel Norment Jr., Ph.D., English, QEP Director
  • Kipton Jensen, Ph.D., philosophy
  • Ardis Blanchard, director, Stewardship and Donor Relations
  • Sharif Wallace, Ph.D., biology
  • Shelby N. Wilson, Ph.D., mathematics
  • Juliet Elu, Ph.D., economics
  • Ron Thomas, journalism
  • Sharmybe Evans, director, Data Analytics, Institutional Research and Effectiveness
  • Stephane Dunn, Ph.D., cinema, television, and emerging media studies
  • Monique Earl-Lewis, Ph.D., africana studies
  • Tina R. Chang, Ph.D., psychology
  • Frederick Knight, Ph.D., director, general education, history
  • Andrew Douglas, Ph.D., political science
  • Yohance Murray, Ph.D., psychology
  • Cynthia Hewitt, Ph.D., sociology
  • Samuel Livingston, Ph.D., africana studies
  • Keith Hollingsworth, Ph.D., business administration
  • Ulrica Wilson, Ph.D., mathematics

contact

Nathaniel Norment Jr., Ph.D., chair, QEP Committee
QEP Office
Brawley Hall 200
(470) 639-0896
nathaniel.norment@morehouse.edu