This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Origins of the WASC Assessment Leadership Academy; (2) Editor's Notes: Parallel Paths to Progress in Assessment in Europe and the United States; (3) The Impact of the First Three Years of the WASC Assessment Leadership Academy; (4) Restructuring the Writing…

As readers of "Assessment Update" know, the call for assessment is sweeping over the globe, so much so that faculty and administrators are finding it difficult to ignore it--though many may wish they could. Unfortunately, awareness does not lead to an increase in assessment implementation because fear of assessment is still widespread. The push…

The Community Outreach Centre (COC) is part of the Community Development portfolio in the Division of Student Affairs at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. It opened in fall 2007 as a resource and support centre for students who live off campus. The overarching goal of the centre is to cultivate community among off-campus students…

Over the last twenty years, colleges and universities have invested considerable effort and resources in programs that are designed to improve undergraduate learning and enhance student success. These programs range from first-year seminars and learning communities to service-learning programs and capstone courses. Given the costs associated with…

The purpose of this article is to describe a procedure that has been used successfully to evaluate the critical thinking (CT) abilities of a population of undergraduates having limited proficiency in the English language. The results of this study demonstrate that it is possible to obtain reliable evaluations of CT skills in undergraduates who…

It is critical to a successful assessment process that faculty play an active role in the development and administration of assessment programs. That process requires a good deal of consensus among faculty members. Once outcomes and an instrument have been decided on and data collected, the faculty must also agree on a course of action to improve…

The degree specification project is a simple, yet pragmatic process of crystallizing the "identity" of the degrees offered in each discipline. In other words, what should students expect to have in the way of skills, knowledge, and abilities once they complete a degree in a specific discipline? Faculty first articulate three to five degree-level…

This article focuses on the assessment system at Western Governors University from the perspective of candidate assessment and performance and on the way in which this system is presented to the Board of Examiners of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). Central to a successful review by the NCATE Board of Examiners…

In the author's position as director of institutional effectiveness and currently as a department assessment chair, he relates that he has found it useful to use an analogy between flossing one's teeth and instituting assessment. There are more similarities between flossing and assessment than one might imagine. In this article, the author…

The standard approach to advisement in most departments at Rowan University is to assign students to faculty members. Some departments may have one person with release time to do all the advising. Properly examining the courses and programs in which undergraduate students are progressing is an appropriate topic of concern. One way to handle such…

In 2004, the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan) was charged by the dean to implement a strategic, comprehensive assessment program within its complex academic environment. The overarching goal of the assessment program was to assess practices in all programs, using common…

Since the establishment of the English as a Second Language (ESL) Program of the Department of English in the School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in 1985, student enrollments, student needs, program policies, course curriculum, and testing procedures had all seen significant changes. However, there…

During the 2006 Spring semester, student affairs administrators at West Virginia University called on all student affairs units to develop assessment plans that focused on student learning. Student affairs units were required to begin their assessment plans by selecting at least one learning outcome to measure. The Assessment Council, ten…

Once a campus reaches the point where all academic units are actively involved in assessing student learning outcomes, it is tempting to sit back and declare victory. However, it has been found that the assessment process itself must be assessed regularly in order for it to continue to be effective. Each spring, the campus-wide assessment…

Creating a climate of assessment is critical for fostering institutional change. This article discusses the authors' work in the Foundations of Excellence in the First College Year project, which has confirmed (across very different campuses) the centrality of assessment in the development and implementation of successful programs to strengthen…