Council on Assessment

October 17, 2012

I am writing to announce the formation of the Council on Assessment, a campus committee that will provide leadership and support for academic departments and programs engaging in the assessment of student learning.  As you may know, every department on campus has been working on defining learning outcomes for their undergraduate majors, the general education program, and now graduate programs.  The next step is to assess how well students are achieving these objectives and to use the results of assessment to inform teaching and improve learning across the campus. 

Assessment of student learning has been a growing trend in higher education for over a decade.  UCSB has been working toward institutionalizing assessment practices in a form that meshes with our research culture for some time.  During the 2011-12 academic year, an assessment task force considered ways of supporting meaningful and sustainable assessment at UCSB, and the formation of the council is the result of that task force’s work.  The council will have ten faculty members from across divisions and colleges, and be chaired for the first two years by the campus’s Accreditation Liaison Officer, Dean Mary Nisbet, and the Associate Accreditation Liaison Officer, Director Margie Weeks.  The faculty’s leadership and engagement are essential to this enterprise, as assessment activities must occur within, and reflect the context of, each discipline and department.  

The Council will serve as a coordinating body, provide expertise in the design and execution of meaningful assessment projects, and review requests for support for projects that exceed department resources.  Drawing on existing staff expertise, an Assessment Research Group has been established in the Office of Budget and Planning to provide research support to the council and to departments.  In this way, we hope to integrate assessment into our academic culture effectively and efficiently.  

The impetus for establishing learning outcomes and assessment plans has been the campus’s need to achieve re-accreditation by WASC.  Each UC campus is similarly engaged.  This external motivation notwithstanding, I believe that our work on defining and assessing learning outcomes has proved to be engaging and meaningful and that it is furthering UCSB’s mission as a research institution that provides a comprehensive liberal arts learning experience.

Council on Assessment Members:

Mary Nisbet                            Co-Chair; Accreditation Liaison Officer; College of Letters and Science

Margie Weeks                        Co-Chair; Associate ALO; Academic Program Review and Accreditation

Linda Adler-Kassner                Writing Program

Kelly Bedard                            Economics

Glenn Beltz                              College of Engineering

Randy Bergstrom                    History

Rolf Christoffersen                  Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology

Brice Erickson                         Classics

Darby Feldwinn                       Chemistry

John Latto                                Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology

Karen Myers                           Communication

Steven C. Velasco                    Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment

Consultants:

Deborah Karoff                       Academic Senate

Laurel Wilder                          Assessment Research Group

Eliza McEmrys                        Assessment Research Group