TO: Department Chairs and Program Coordinators
FROM: Valerie Lehr
RE: End of semester updates
DATE: December 15, 2008
I want to give you an update on assessment. As you may recall, last spring you received a message noting that departments and programs would be asked to continue their work on assessing student learning outcomes in this academic year. Toward that end, I'm writing now to let you know that at the beginning of next semester you will be asked to develop a detailed plan for the next stage of your departmental assessment work. You will be asked to submit an abstract of this plan to me by Friday, April 3 and a final version by Monday June 1, and to implement it beginning in the fall of 2009.
To facilitate the next steps in student learning assessment in your department or program, the Assessment Committee will organize workshops to be held at the CTL during the spring semester on specific topics such as developing and refining learning goals and conducting direct assessment. The committee is currently planning three workshops in February to help in this process, with others to be scheduled throughout the semester as necessary. The committee also hopes to devote one session at May College to discussion of this work.
If there is another faculty member in your department or program (in addition to the chair) who will be especially involved in assessment, please let me know who that person is so s/he can be included in future discussions of this process. Area studies programs and Gender and Sexuality Studies will participate in this process in different ways since these programs are engaged in the Teagle assessment grant. While this process will begin in the spring semester, it may be worthwhile to begin thinking about it now, since in some cases departments may wish to begin collecting student work to be assessed immediately or otherwise developing and implementing their plans before the end of the spring. In any case, please keep the need to complete this work in mind as you think about your departmental agendas for the coming months.
