This year’s ongoing assessment work in the division of Student Development and Enrollment Management has been a combination of efforts. Each department once again created an individual assessment plan, with goals and objectives which focused on specific aspects of their work with students. Those plans are in the process of being carried out as the academic year progresses. At the same time, the division has focused on one of our Key Performance Indicators “Degree of Student Engagement” by utilizing the results of our participation last year in the NASPA Student Affairs Assessment Consortium benchmark study “Campus Activities and Student Involvement.” A division-wide committee has been established to analyze those results and devise key strategies to address ways of further engaging our students. At the same time, we utilized our winter retreat to prepare for the upcoming strategic planning process by further educating our staff about the CAS Standards and the idea that beginning next academic year we will move to a schedule of departmental self-assessment (program review) against the CAS standards to integrate these standards more broadly across the division. To get us ready for this process, this spring we are engaged in a division-wide exercise of mapping how each department’s activities and services incorporate the various subcategories of the learning domains. This work should result in each department achieving a global self-rating of the student learning and developmental outcomes they have achieved with students, based on cumulative results of the assessment work they have done. In turn, we plan to integrate this data to develop a division-wide picture of these student learning and developmental outcomes to see what our strengths are, and also, where we, as a Division, might need to focus additional attention as we move forward.
