Departmental Assessment

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Updated February 2026

To help streamline assessment projects and feedback, as well as consistent data collection, the University developed a new process for assessment starting with AY 2024-25:  Departmental assessment reports are due now each September, with a progress update due prior to it, on June 1.  The progress report is just a short update on what the department did, no analysis is at that time expected.  The full report then includes analysis and a discussion about what the department will do as a result of what they learned from this assessment.  With the submission of the September report, departments will also submit an assessment plan for the coming year.  By October, departments will then receive feedback on their assessment report and assessment plan for the next year from the Director of the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITA).  Report submission and feedback are managed through a workflow in Slate and use a common template for the report format. 

In addition, the CITA director offers support for assessment in a variety of ways including assessment workshops, departmental visits and other assessment consultations.  

Updated March 2018

Beginning in 2007, we have asked departments to regularly update learning goals and to use indirect and direct methods to assess the extent to which students take courses that address these goals and meet the goals in those courses.  A review of the work submitted suggests that we have made progress in developing multiple methods to accomplish these tasks; that most, indeed almost all, departments have carried out projects that have had an impact on their curriculum and/or pedagogy; and that we are developing a faculty that has much to share with one another as we move this work forward.

The following links are intended to summarize some of the methods that have been used by departments and identify departments that have benefited from each method in order to foster conversation across departments and in which we improve our assessment efforts by learning from one another.

This link will direct you to the form we ask department/program chairs to use when submitting their annual assessment reports.  This form can also be found on the "Academic Assessment" Sakai site which we ask you to use for all assessment submissions.