A cornerstone of the SACS reaffirmation process, QEP is a carefully designed and focused University-wide initiative aimed at further enhancing student learning in a chosen topic area.

The ice cream social will be held from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in the Memorial Plaza at the Powell Building. In the event of rain, it will be moved under the overhang outside Powell.

“We decided on an ice cream social because it’s fun and will reach a variety of people, especially students,” said Onda Bennett, chair of the committee. “This important decision about how to enhance student learning at EKU will have an impact on the whole campus far into the future.

“The QEP is not only a requirement of SACS,” she said. “It is a way for us to coordinate and focus our energies toward a significant issue in student learning for EKU. Teaching and learning is what we are all about. This process will ensure that time, talent and resources will be focused on the theme and supported by the University for a minimum of five years, beginning in 2007.”

The theme and focus statements were created by the QEP Committee, based on the results of a student and faculty survey earlier that was completed earlier this semester.

The theme is “Eastern Kentucky University will develop informed, critical, and creative thinkers who communicate effectively.”

The focus statements are:

• Students will be able to identify, discover, and use relevant information in order to gain knowledge and solve problems.
• Students will be able to analyze information and ideas using appropriate methods.
• Students will generate their own ideas and express them effectively.
• Students will be able to clearly articulate a point of view and develop it with awareness of alternate perspectives.

“Now that the theme and focus statements for QEP are complete, the committee will be asking the University community to develop individual or interdisciplinary proposals related to the theme and focus statements detailing learning outcomes, action initiatives, key performance indicators and needed resources,” Bennett said. “This is the next step toward writing the compete Quality Enhancement Plan in the spring.”