Goals

Strategies

Activities

Outcomes

Individuals Impacted

Increase accountability by participating in a national project that uses a standardized format for tracking and reporting profiles of student characteristics, measures of student engagement with learning, and measures of academic achievement at NIU.

Established College Portrait Advisory Committee

Hire a permanent fulltime supportive professional staff position to coordinate VSA.

Administer the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)

Selected as measure of "value added" for student learning outcomes in 2010.

The VSA Advisory Committee was established

A full-time supportive professional staff member was hired

A longitudinal plan for securing required data elements, the source for the data, and the timeline for data collection and updates was developed

The VSA timetable for data collection and reporting was implemented

The VSA website was created Oversight for the VSA was transferred to the University

Assessment Panel (UAP) in 2010 (milestone 6). The evaluation process will include regular reports to the UAP about the College Portrait data and the VSA initiative as a whole

The administration of the CLA was implemented with freshmen (milestone 7) in fall 2011 and plans are in development to administer the CLA to seniors in spring 2012.

Faculty/Staff

- 19 advisory committee members

External

492 unique visits made to VSA website

Students

- 120 Freshmen, 200 seniors participating in CLA

Goals

Strategies

Activities

Outcomes

Individuals Impacted

The goals for conducting evaluations of doctoral departments by external reviews are to foster program improvement and provide external validation of program quality.

Established processes and schedules for conducting the reviews

Developed criteria for the selection of external reviewers

Generated format for the development of supplemental information

Created format for external reviewers’ reports

Established requirements for the payment of honoraria to external reviewers

Implemented the external review process in 2009

Four (4) external reviews were conducted in spring 2009:

An external review for Department of Geography (in anticipation of implementation of the Ph.D. degree) was conducted in fall 2009.

An external review of Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences was conducted in fall 2010.

A special external review was conducted in fall 2010 to evaluate the feasibility of converting the Ed.D. program in educational psychology to the Ph.D.

External reviews for the programs in Counseling (M.S.Ed. and Ed.D) and Adult and Higher Education (M.S.Ed. and Ed.D.) were conducted in fall 2010.

An external review of the programs in the Department of English was conducted in spring 2011.

Faculty/Staff/Students

- 10 doctoral reviews were completed