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| 2000-2004 WASC Accreditation |
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4.4: The institution employs a deliberate set of quality assurance processes at each level of institutional functioning, including new curriculum and program approval processes, periodic program review, ongoing evaluation, and data collection. These processes involve assessments of effectiveness, track results over time, and use the results of these assessments to revise and improve structures and processes, curricula, and pedagogy.
Institutional Research provides a number of standard reports that are mailed or e-mailed to campus constituents and posted on the web. These include information on student enrollments, enrollment projections, Fall Fact sheets, admissions statistics, student retention and graduation, faculty workload and course audits, as well as results of student surveys such as the annual freshmen survey, and ad hoc surveys such as the National Survey of Student Engagement. In consultation with an ad hoc Institutional Research Advisory Group comprised of the Vice Provost/Dean of Undergraduate Education (VPDUE), the Vice Provost of Academic Affairs (VPAA), as well as Assistant Deans and analysts from across the campus, Institutional Research is developing web-based departmental profiles. These profiles will incorporate a set of standardized metrics and consolidate existing data about workload, financials, faculty, and student information into one place. This will be available to faculty leaders, administrators, and Academic Senate committees as they work together to provide programmatic assessment. Program Review as Evidence of Commitment to Excellence. The WASC process currently underway, as well has the strategic planning and budget processes in which the campus has engaged, clearly reveal that every campus unit should improve its use of data to critically evaluate divisions, departments, their programs and curricula. In response to this, the academic senate and the administration have been working together to develop better review procedures (including defined metrics of assessment), and the information data required for assessment. In addition to course and program evaluations, to compare UCSC undergraduates’ engagement with and progress towards a set of nationally agreed upon learning objectives following directly from literature on student engagement, UCSC has participated in recent years in a Pew-Foundation-sponsored national study – The National Study of Student Engagement. The study demonstrates that, compared to students at our peer research universities, our student engage in more hours of scholarly activities at a higher level of cognitive complexity. Not content to simply report benchmark scores, we are currently involved in the UCUES project (insert link). This seeks to understand the relationship between dimensions of student engagement and learning outcomes. Ultimately, as a result of our involvement with the project, we hope to gain a subtler understanding of the relationship between admissions criteria, various dimensions of student engagement, and positive student outcomes including retention and graduation, and alumni success. We have recently completed an extensive on-line survey that will be required of every graduating senior. This year we inaugurated the survey; although it was not mandatory, nearly 50% of graduating seniors completed the survey. Next year, its completion will be a requirement of all graduating students. The data we sought examined their satisfaction with advising, facilities, faculty, their curriculum, general education, writing, internships and research opportunities and many other things. The results of this survey will be included in our educational effectiveness analysis. The Center for Teaching Excellence, in addition to providing curricular and instructor evaluation tools, is also very active in providing in-class evaluation of teaching. The Director of the Center visits classrooms upon request of the faculty and videotapes the class and works with the faculty member to determine how to improve teaching and learning. The Center works with new faculty members and with graduate students, providing them information and advice on teaching practices and how to improve learning. Faculty and graduate students use the services of the Center extensively across the campus. The Center recently completed a survey of instructors that led to recommendations to improve its overall effectiveness. To ensure the systematic assessment of student support services, each objective in the SA strategic plan includes a requirement to provide managers with evidence of achievement on each objective.
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Copyright ©2003 UC Regents | Maintained by susan.jessen@adm.ucsc.edu |
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