At its second annual best practices and awards luncheon on April 30, the BYU-Hawaii assessment program recognized six academic and support departments, and presented a Mahalo Nui Award to one individual, who have identified target objectives, measured outcomes and made follow-up improvements.
Dr. William Neal — Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Planning, Institutional Research, Assessment and Testing (PIRAT) — said the overall program calls for all campus departments to implement assessment measures "to identify the outcomes or goals they would like to measure, effective ways they have to measure them, and how they will implement the results they've learned."
"This program grows out of accreditation expectations, and has become one of our themes," Dr. Neal continued. "This is also an opportunity for departments to share with one another what they've learned over the past year."
Accounting Professor Glade Tew, chairman of the University Assessment Committee, said this year's awards went to:
- Security, for using customer feedback from the Graduating Student Survey to implement a quality improvement plan.
- IWES, for fully implementing an assessment process (obtained results from an annual plan that clearly aligns to the multi-year assessment plan)
- EIL, for consistent, excellent performance and for promise in obtaining desired outcomes
- Information Systems, for fully implementing an assessment process (obtained results from an annual plan that clearly aligns to the multi-year assessment plan)
- International Students, for timely and efficient manner of servicing students and updating electronic records
- School of Education (SOE), for total involvement of faculty and staff in preparing for and achieving accreditation.
- SOE special education professor Dr. Ray Thompson, who was cited individually for his work in putting together the School of Education's outstanding "evidence room" for a preliminary accrediting team visit.
In addition, EIL took first place for their poster/display; followed by Academic Advising, second place; TESOL, third place; and honorable mention to Admissions, Counseling, Honor Code, ICS, Library and Psychology.
Tew also explained "part of the recognition is for timeliness, part of it is for fulfilling their assessment plan, the changes they've made as a result of assessment, and for evidence of a culture of change." He added the 12-member committee tries "to help and support each department at the university with their assessment plan."
Dr. Neal pointed out that the BYUH assessment program grew out of university's 2003 accreditation proposal. "We asked each department to put together a five-year plan identifying assessment outcomes for each major. We've published those in the catalog. It's an ongoing program."
"The luncheon is a good time to celebrate a lot of the successes that we hope will become more of a culture on our campus. The real test will come a year from now when we have the accrediting team here for what they call the institutional effectiveness review."
Dr. Neal noted the U.S. Department of Education's Spellings Commission has called accreditation a "core strategy for determining the effectiveness of an education institution." The commission report stated:
"Colleges and universities need to do a much better job measuring and proving that they're successful in educating students." The report continued that accreditation previously focused more on reputation than overall success in outcomes, "especially in terms of student achievement."
"We're responding ahead of time to some of those concerns," Dr. Neal said. "It's going to be a major change in higher education."
"Colleges and universities should be collecting and publishing much more quantifiable data about the successes of their students, and in doing so make it possible to compare their outcomes with other institutions." He added at BYU-Hawaii we've included academic support areas " to create a culture of assessment across the campus."
Dr. Paul Freebairn, Director of University Assessment and Committee coordinator, explained assessment is important at BYU-Hawaii "because we're involving people in continuous improvement in their areas, whether it's academic, administrative, student life, so we can improve in the services we offer and learn how to better reach students and share best practices."
"What we're doing is really a celebration of a year-long effort, working together, doing things in our own departments that are nice to share with people across campus. I have really seen some improvement this past year. I'm really encouraged by the 28 displays we've had out of 56 departments that are participating in the assessment program," he continued.
"We're preparing for the WASC accreditation educational effectiveness team visit next year. We're very excited about that." The WASC visit will take place March 26-28, 2008.
Photo caption: BYUH students check out the Hawaiian Studies Department's assessment display. Photo and video by Mike Foley
