UAAC Meeting 10/30/15
Attendance: Mike Reid, John DeBoer, Betsy Story, Nathan Lindsay, Jasmine Laine
Update on accreditation efforts:
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Good initial meetings with Math and the Ethics assessment pilot groups
Collegiate Learning Assessment is complete—we got 102 students who participated
o Ideas for recruiting seniors: GLI capstones, other capstones, senior athletics
o Ask deans and chairs for senior-level classes that we could use
Project Innovation Cultivation
o 406 first-year students filled it out (27% response rate)
Nathan will be meeting with Jeanne Loftus and Terri Herron to talk about GLI assessment for the
future
o We will be developing a plan (with rubrics, surveys, and/or focus groups) that can be
implemented. It’s a good aspect of the outcomes associated with Gen Ed efforts
The updated report for the NWCCU November meeting was shared
o Includes writing assessment data
 But there’s not a pre-assessment so we don’t know if there’s value added. You
could come out looking bad, even if you took a student from poor to fair/good.
 Can we do a pre-test? Using a random sample of WRIT 101 papers?
 Overall, this process is a large improvement from the past.
o The last dept (Law) submitted their assessment plan, so we are at 100%!
o Lee Thornton (NWCCU) was at our 21st Century education conference this week, which
was right in line with our project.
Next NWCCU meeting is Nov 12 in Seattle. On March 1st we go before the board members for
NWCCU and give another update.
Institutional Assessment Report
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What’s the purpose of this?
Other things to include (academically-focused):
o More info on research. Like Xprize, trauma research
o Creative scholarship? How about the Art museum and Montana Rep and bigger music
exhibitions. Cities in Rep visit how many patrons walked through the galleries. Creative
writing functions.
o Dynamic Learning Environment: academic space
o Creative Scholarship
o Practical work that comes under Missoula College
o Under Education for the Global Century Education “Leadership and Global Engagement”
would be a good place for the Fulbright.
o Engaging Students: how about for civic engagement, student representatives are on
every committees across campus; ASUM has 190 student groups; what about athletics?
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Some things should remain standard in the report because we want to track them.
Discussion: how do we assess strategic initiatives?
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HR is comfortable with assessing their professional training staff member. We need to figure out
how to do it. We need to start with what was proposed with the new position and were there
any outcomes or benefits outlined? Also the job description? Return on investment?
o A self-report could be included. If we gave them the categories, they could write a twopage report to provide their perspective. Include relationship to enrollment and the
strategic plan. Include future goals for this position and any metrics or achievement
targets.
o Reasonable timeline for this review? Mike thinks about a month. Then we can look at it
before the committee meets next.
We should develop a format that is standardized. The outcomes could be populated based on
what was originally submitted. The section of proposals for the planning committee should list
its outcomes. Then it’s documented when it goes through the Planning committee, and we
could easily fill out how they’ve reached the outcomes.
Make sure the justification is measurable. Currently they can answer the question without giving
measurable outcomes.
Under “Justification” we should add a section that requires a minimum (2? 3?) of measurable
outcomes/metrics. “What are the measurable outcomes/metrics associated with this initiative?
Please provide at least 2 measurable outcomes/metrics for assessing the proposal.”
o What have you done to make sure you can continue to assess your processes? We need
to make sure we will have continual assessment of the effectiveness of each
process/program (i.e., ongoing evaluation).
o This new process will definitely help people to realize that continuous assessment is part
of the way we do things.
The timeline of assessment. This will have impact on faculty and the CBA—maybe check with
the Union. The planning committee template could have an internal-use section that asks them
to decide how long it should be before assessment (e.g., one, two, or three years).