Assessment Workshops
An Important Opportunity for Faculty and Departments
Last spring, Barbara Walvoord, author and faculty member at Notre Dame, held a
workshop on assessment for faculty. Feedback that I received indicated that she
made assessment an easily understood concept with numerous concrete examples
drawn from faculty experiences.
This year we will take the next step in assessment and require each department
to develop an assessment plan for each of your degree programs. I have asked
Associate Vice president Stephanie Witt and Associate Director of Institutional
Analysis, Assessment, and Reporting (IAAR), Marcia Belcheir, to lead this
effort. To assist in this work, Barbara Walvoord will return this fall on
September 22nd to present the workshop again. It will be held from 8:30 a.m. to
noon in the Lookout room of the Student Union. I spoke about this at the recent
chairs breakfast. In a few weeks a campus wide announcement will go out with
much of the same information contained in this e-mail. I encourage you and your
faculty to attend Barbara’s workshop if you missed it last time. If you plan to
attend, simply reply (do not “reply all”) to this e-mail and materials will be
prepared for you.
In addition to the workshop, Barbara will be available on September 23rd to work
with individual chairs who would like help in developing their assessment plans.
These individual sessions are not designed to take the place of the workshop,
but rather to supplement the workshop with a focus specific to your department
and what you wish to achieve with your academic programs. If you would like to
meet with Barbara you will need to have a draft of your plan prepared ahead of
time for her to review prior to your meeting. If you are interested in
consulting with Barbara, please contact Marcia Belcheir at mbelcheir@boisestate.edu
to schedule a time. Only 8-10 time slots are available.
Also, if you have not already done so, now is a good time to begin the
conversation with your faculty about the major learning outcomes expected of
your graduates. Each of you will receive a copy of Barbara’s book, Assessment
Clear and Simple, at the September 20th Department Chairs meeting to guide you
as you develop your plans.
Your program assessment plans will be due to your dean the end of January. I am
attaching the template that will be used to develop your assessment plan. I
recognize that many programs have existing plans that might be in a very
different format. We will require that you submit your plans on the template
provided so that we have consistency across departments in what we can say about
student learning outcomes at Boise State.
Please know that this is not “just another task.” Assessment of our academic
programs is a key responsibility of departments. Your effort on this will result
in more focus on what students should be learning throughout their career at
Boise State and do much to enhance our efforts on creating quality programs and
improving student retention.
Thank you,
Sona
