We've been talking a lot about assessment in the college leadership following up on the accreditation visit in which the site team found us out of compliance on that standard. We will be talking more in the coming days about all of this, but I wanted to give you a quick rundown of some of the things we are discussing.

• Greater engagement of everyone in this process: We do a lot in assessment - seven different measures including portfolios, surveys, exit exam and Dialogue with the Deans. But in order for it to make the most difference, we need to get faculty and some staff more involved in talking about what we are learning and what it should mean for students.

• Learning outcomes by major connected with the 12 values and competencies: Ralph Beliveau has already gotten the Creative Media Production faculty together to identify learning outcomes for the major, connected where relevant to the 12 accreditation values and competencies. We are asking faculty in all other majors to meet in the next few weeks to do the same thing.

• Learning outcomes in syllabi connected with the 12 values and competencies: We asked all instructors to put clear learning outcomes in their syllabi. We will be talking more about how to do this based on the discussions of outcomes in the majors.

• A revised exit exam: This is the weakest link in our assessment plan, and we need to figure out how to make it better - particularly how to connect it better to learning in major-specific classes.

• A review of how we oversee internships: Some internship supervisors and students told the site team they wanted more contact with the college during internships. This is hard to do with the busy schedules of everyone involved, but we will be discussing how we can do this better.

All ideas are welcome. Ralph is the college undergraduate assessment liaison, so please share any thoughts with him or me.

Sincerely,
David Craig