Assessment Academy

Overview

The Assessment Academy was a four-year project initiated by SMSU and led by a team of faculty members and administrators as part of the Higher Learning Commission’s (HLC’s) Assessment Academy. SMSU participated in the project from fall 2015 through fall 2019. SMSU's project was well-received at the HLC Assessment Academy Results Forum and our university successfully graduated from the academy on October 31, 2019.

The original overarching goal of the project is to improve campus-wide assessment of SMSU’s Liberal Education Program (LEP) Student Learning Outcomes. Academic programs identified LEP student learning outcomes that overlapped with their own programmatic learning outcomes. The project also allowed SMSU to identify some assessment process and structure deficiencies. Attempts to solve these problems through the Assessment Academy's work led to the development of SMSU's Campus Assessment Master Plan and substantial revisions to assessment reporting. During the project, the assessment culture at SMSU shifted substantially with participation of all academic programs in the assessment of student learning.

The Assessment Academy Team was first led by Dr. Theresa Henning, and then by Dr. Jeffrey W. Bell. Team members included: Provost Dwight Watson, Dr. Betsy Desy, Dean Aimee Shouse, Dean Scott Crowell, Ms. Pam Gladis, Dr. Benjamin Anderson, and Mr. Alan Matzner.

SMSU Assessment Academy Graduation Photo, St. Charles, Illinois, October 31, 2019.

At SMSU's graduation from the Assessment Academy, the team presented a poster of their assessment journey. An acronym guide to the poster can be found here. The four year set of reports sent to HLC by the Assessment Academy are located here.