September 7, 2006
Colleagues,
I write to initiate this year’s assessment work in academic departments and programs. The overall institutional effort with assessment is larger, even, than the sum-total of the work you are doing, because it will include an approach to assessing our general education curriculum, and our aims and objectives overall. At our next meeting Kim Mooney will brief us on the plans of the Assessment Committee and the Middle States Steering Committee.
Last year you and your colleagues undertook important work on your program's learning goals. The Assessment Committee intends to provide specific feedback to each program on the goals statements you have submitted, and you should receive this feedback by mid-semester.
Now that you have articulated your learning goals, the next step is to develop a plan to evaluate the extent to which students in your program are realizing those goals. I encourage you to consult the resources developed by your scholarly societies for this purpose, to contact colleagues at peer institutions to find out what they do, and to avail yourself of the advice and support of the Assessment Committee. You have already received from Kim some resources to provide guidance, and she will be demonstrating an assessment resource web site that the Assessment Committee is building that will have links, for example, to assessment plans at other institutions.
Please, then, lead your program colleagues in a process to design an assessment plan. Departmental or program assessment plans should include the means and methods you will use to assess the achievement of your program's learning goals, and a schedule of implementation of your plan. The goal is to make program research, assessment, and responsive innovation a continuous cycle that is just a normal part of the working culture of your department. Viable, sustainable assessment work is strategic; design methods and a multi-year schedule of assessment projects that will really address issues that need attention. Think in terms of specific projects rather than comprehensive outcomes studies. By the close of this academic year, all departments and programs should have a strategic plan for assessment that you will begin to implement in 2007-08.
Thank you,
Grant
