Campus Assessment Network
Notes from Meeting of
October 9, 2009
The first meeting of the Campus Assessment Network (CAN) for the 2009–2010 academic year was
held on Friday, October 9, at 2:00 p.m. in Campus Life 115.
Present were Will Boelcke, Amy Buhrow, Carolinda Douglass, Amy Franklin, Barbara Johnson,
Brian Lance, Greg Long, Mary Pritchard, Deborah Robertson, and Beth Towell.
Welcome and Introductions
Carolinda Douglass opened the meeting, and all present introduced themselves. The general yearly
meeting scheduled was reviewed. There are two meetings during the fall semester, two during the
spring semester, and one during the summer term. The rest of this year’s meetings have yet to be
scheduled, as an attempt is made to accommodate as many CAN members as possible.
Announcements and Updates
The Catherine Wehlburg workshop on Faculty Learning Groups will be held in the Sky Room at
Holmes on Friday, October 16, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Morning and afternoon registrations are
being handled through the faculty development office. The speaker will be working into her
presentation the themes of the Baccalaureate Review—critical thinking, communication, and
context. It was noted that a fourth component, creativity, should also be included when
baccalaureate goals are discussed.
Webpage Development
The CAN website will be available directly and as a sidebar of the OAS (Office of Assessment
Services) site; it will also be added to the A–Z campus directory. One feature at the site will be the
Campus Assessment Message posters, whose theme is MAP to Excellence. (Mark McGowan will be
doing a story on the posters, which were distributed earlier this fall, in an upcoming release of
Northern Today.) Also on the website will be news about the New Faculty Expo and the P–20
engagement event.
Some discussion ensued about the need to emphasize the “story” of assessment as a process of
growth and a creative journey to new solutions. The importance of expanding the practice of
assessment from the program level to the course level was discussed. Assessment would then be
automatically included in the objectives for any new course.
CAN Blackboard Community
It was decided that the Blackboard application for CAN would be dropped, because of lack of
interest. New approaches for networking were discussed, including the use of listserves.
In order to help make the assessment process come alive, Deborah Robertson volunteered to look
into making a movie about assessment practices in the theatre department. It could be posted online
and perhaps featured in other venues as well.
There was additional discussion of other needs and topics to be addressed by CAN, including better
coordination of accreditation processes, and development of data collection and storage tools that
could serve multiple purposes.
Fall Rollout of Campus Assessment Message
A brief recap of the distribution of the Campus Assessment Message posters emphasized the four
targeted audiences: administrators, faculty, students, and community partners.
Plans for 2010 Assessment Expo
The third annual Assessment Expo will be held on March 19, 2010, in the Sky Room. The poster
sessions and roundtable discussions will focus on the four Cs: critical thinking, communication,
context, and creativity. The possibility of taping the presentations was proposed, along with a
possible U Tube feature. There was discussion about the need to change the general perception of
assessment, to make it come alive for its practitioners, and to spread the idea that the process of
change, reevaluation, and measurement can be exciting.
Other Business
The second half of the meeting will be the distribution of books for the OAS/CAN book group, a
brief introduction to the book, and a discussion of needs and expectations of the group members.
The title under discussion this fall is Building a Scholarship of Assessment by Trudy Banta.
All CAN members will be notified when the next Campus Assessment Network meeting has been
scheduled.
U\Assessment\CAN\Notess\CANNote2009-10-09