Assessment: A UConn Priority

TO:         University Deans, Directors, and Department Heads

FROM:       Peter J. Nicholls, Provost

Assessment is a word that is bandied about frequently in higher education circles these days, to the point where it is losing its true meaning and is becoming a catch-all phrase or piece of academic jargon. Assessment, though, is not at all mysterious, and we do it often in our daily lives without labeling it. Assessment is the process of setting goals, measuring our success at achieving them, and then reflecting about necessary changes before beginning the cycle once again.

In higher education, assessment involves looking at the results or outcomes of education to see what value is added by years of study. More precisely, it is the systematic collection, review, and use of information for the purpose of improving student learning. Traditionally, colleges and universities have measured their educational success only through "inputs" such as the SAT scores and GPAs of incoming students. National movements for accountability call for measures of the value added of a college education, or, to put it quite directly, what students have learned. Regional accreditation agencies, such as our own NEASC, now require the assessment of student learning for accreditation.

While assessment's purview can be as broad as institutional effectiveness and can include everything from graduate education to the library, at the University of Connecticut , our initial focus is on learning outcomes for undergraduates. For the past year, David Yalof and Eric Soulsby have been successfully establishing and organizing the assessment of undergraduate education. In addition to providing hardware and software for data collection and reporting and developing an informative website ( www.assessment.uconn.edu ), David and Eric have worked with academic departments and faculty to help them delineate learning outcomes for every major, so that we are in a strong position for our NEASC reaccreditation visit in January. They are also working on a providing a web-based system for assessment plan reporting. Departmental faculty liaisons have worked hard to articulate the goals and priorities of their respective programs, and are now poised to draft assessment plans.

Assessment, however, does not end or go into abeyance after the NEASC reaccreditation visit. It is, and will remain, a significant measure of institutional success and resource allocation. Here are my goals for assessment in the short and long term. By the end of this academic year (2006-2007), I expect all departments to have means of measuring the learning outcomes of their undergraduate majors, as well as complete assessment plans. In the academic year 2007-2008, we will begin actual assessment, data collection, and reporting. For the next several years, we will focus on the assessment of undergraduate education; after that, we will evaluate our progress and consider how best we should expand our efforts, into graduate education and elsewhere.

Faculty rightly want to know how assessment will be administered and what kind of resources will be allocated for assessment. For the next two or three years, while we are focusing on undergraduate assessment, that effort will be led by Eric Soulsby, as Assistant Vice Provost, reporting to the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Regional Campus Administration (Veronica Makowsky), effective July 1, 2007.  For the past year, as Special Assistant to Vice Provost Makowsky, he has directed the assessment effort with David Yalof and provided sound leadership and expertise. As assistant vice provost, Eric will have some shared staff support in Undergraduate Education and Instruction, appropriate technical assistance from UITS, and a small budget to maintain the software and hardware and promote and assist assessment throughout the university.

I am not proposing an elaborate or costly administrative structure because assessment actually takes place in the academic departments, raising questions of departmental resources and priorities. In terms of priorities, I give assessment, with advising, high priority in departmental responsibilities. Assessment is an integral part of teaching: you need to know if your students are learning what you want them to learn so that you can adjust and improve accordingly. While additional resources will not be allocated to departments for assessment, I do recognize that this office makes many demands upon school and departmental resources and I hope that it will be possible to remove some of the more burdensome and less valuable of these.

Assessment, then, while neither mystifying nor miraculous, is, like most worthwhile endeavors, challenging. In the words of Maya Angelou, "Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead and . . . if the future road looms ominous or unpromising . . . then we need to gather our resolve and . . . step off . . . into another direction," sound advice for institutions as well as for individuals.