From 1979-1982, ten American Association for State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) member institutions participated in developing a paradigm for evaluating student and program performance with respect to the intellectual abilities of communicating, quantifying, analyzing, synthesizing, and valuing. Faculty viewpoints toward the general process of academic program evaluation are characterized and range from those expressing wariness of any kind of evaluation to those voicing support, from those to be expected from humanities faculty to those of a behaviorist persuasion, from those which derogate projects of this nature to those who offer constructive criticisms. Reactions of faculty to the specific stages of the project are discussed with references to the perceptions of project leaders of the ten institutions. The stages include (1) developing conceptual definitions, (2) identifying observable performances and criteria, (3) designing and implementing an assessment of students and programs, (4) making judgments regarding student and program performance, and (5) developing policy. A series of recommendations is made for institutions which might be considering use of the Academic Program Evaluation Project paradigm. (Author/GK)