Chapter 5
Academic Programs

 

5.6 Academic Program Assessment

Academic Program Assessment at SVSU has been developed to varying degrees within colleges, departments, and academic support programs. The number of professionally accredited programs and the accompanying assessment activities have made a substantial contribution to instituting academic program assessment at SVSU. The process of revising General Education has also been particularly instrumental in engaging the entire university faculty in an assessment process. Many faculty have become familiar with assessment processes and practices and have incorporated assessment measures in their classroom; some departments use assessment data to revise their programs; colleges use assessment data in program review and planning. Workshops on assessment have been held at the university. Select faculty and administrative staff have attended national workshops on assessment and made presentations on assessment at national conferences. However, Academic Program Assessment is not yet fully institutionalized, and the institution does not yet have a process in place to coordinate and administer an assessment program that is comprehensive throughout the university.

History of Academic Program Assessment at SVSU

As discussed in Chapter 2, the 1994 NCA team expressed concerns regarding both institutional assessment and the General Education Program at SVSU. In 1994-95, an 18-member Assessment Advisory Committee composed of administration, faculty, and staff members drafted a university assessment plan which was submitted to NCA in June 1995. As part of that plan, a faculty member was also appointed as Assessment Director to help departments develop assessment plans. Once departments had submitted their program assessment plans to the Assessment Director, the Assessment Advisory Committee ceased to meet, and, although some departments continued working on their individual assessment programs, these efforts were not formally monitored. In fact, following the submission of the Academic Assessment Plan in June 1995, there was a general shift of attention and resources from major program assessment toward the assessment and revision of the General Education Program.

As described above, beginning in fall 1996 and continuing through winter 1998, faculty were involved in assessing the extant General Education program. Following that assessment, a new General Education program was developed, and the current General Education Program was ratified in March 2000. As discussed earlier in this chapter, the new General Education Program includes a strong assessment component.

Once the new General Education Program was established, attention was directed toward major program assessment once again. Personnel changes during this interim period contributed to the loss of momentum in pursuing academic program assessment. In a renewed effort, responsibility for carrying out this work was assigned to the new Director of Sponsored and Academic Program Support and Evaluation, working with the new Assistant Vice-President for Academic Affairs.

Departments were surveyed to ascertain what level of assessment was taking place and how much progress had been made since the 1996 survey. The survey found that those programs with outside professional accreditation are engaged in consistent assessment efforts and also that a variety of assessment activities are taking place at the department level. Departments with GE courses conduct departmental program reviews and assess courses in the General Education Program. Also, instructional support centers, such as the Math Resource Center, the Writing Center, and the Student Technology Center make extensive use of assessment data in developing and evaluating program services. Grant-funded programs, especially the Title II and Title III programs, follow mandated evaluation and auditing processes.

However, even when programs are extensively assessed, it is not always apparent how department-level assessment efforts are linked to institutional decision-making. Faculty expressed concerns about lack of follow-through (i.e., activities being carried out but without a clear sense of how to make use of results), lack of training, and lack of resources to make needed changes.