otherside--this is what i suspected. haven't been able to gather data, not aware of the issue, and so forth. institutional effectiveness is more than most here are accustomed to.

ironically, if you're referring to polymer science, they are probably better than the "average bear" at assessing program quality, even at the undergraduate level. as i said in this thread or another (i'm getting thread-worn) institutional effectiveness and assessment is a constant process. are our students learning what we want to, if so/not what do we do to improve or change? to me it's a basic item of what all academic departments ought to be doing at all levels (even doctoral).

invictus--you and i are singing from the same page of sheet music. (you pick it). at USM unfortunately, lots of the planning and assessment are not connected to budget. i talked to someone who has been through some SACS workshops and the connection to budget is crucial.. there have to be monetary links to the planning and assessment process.

i say that based on the fact that they know more about their undergrads than most departments do. if i am wrong, please correct me.

quote:

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Originally posted by: stinky cheese man
"invictus--you and i are singing from the same page of sheet music. (you pick it). at USM unfortunately, lots of the planning and assessment are not connected to budget. i talked to someone who has been through some SACS workshops and the connection to budget is crucial.. there have to be monetary links to the planning and assessment process."

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"A plan with a budget is not a plan." One of the first "institutional effectiveness gurus" I ever met told me this back around 1989. There are different ways to approach it, of course, but the linkage has to be there. As I've said before, a lot of it is common sense stuff & USM probably does some of it without knowing it. Do deans review enrollments over time, historical adjunct staffing levels, etc., when they are asked to approve new full-time positions in departments under their supervision?

But there are plenty of "institutional effectiveness" decisions that aren't strictly tied to budget. When a department chair looks at a set of bad student evaluations or a horrible grade distro for an adjunct & decides not to employ that person in the future, that chair has closed the loop ... if the chair is working from a department objective that specifies a target for evaluation results or maximum withdrawal rate. (In this case, IE helps keep the department chair from being accused of making arbitrary & capricious decisions.)

I'm sticking to some very basic examples here, because that is really where 99% of the things that can make a real difference for students takes place. But if we want to get "global" about it, had USM been working from a real IE plan all along, the nursing department would be in a lot better shape right now & the CISE wouldn't be fretting about NCATE, because there would've been "global" budgeting priorities set on those things.

If there is a big "sell" for IE to the top brass, it shouldn't be fear of SACS. It should be that a bona fide system of planning, assessment & use of results lessens the need for "crisis management." Right now, USM appears (to the outside observer) to jump from one "crisis" to another without a lot of vision & direction. Maybe the top administration gets off on crisis management, I dunno, but it's really not a healthy thing for individual human beings or for organizations.

The big stumbling block to all this is that a lot of administrators cherish having "discretionary money" & can be awfully reluctant to have to let that money out based on standards, justification & demonstrated needs. Human nature wants to be able to use "power" (in this case, money) to reward friends & penalize enemies. In a good IE system, decision making (including budget) has to be divorced from personalities & hooked back into research-driven justification of needs.

That's one reason Shelby Thames needs to go back to the lab. He's forgotten what research-driven decision making is all about.

quote:

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Originally posted by: Invictus
" "A plan with a budget is not a plan." One of the first "institutional effectiveness gurus" I ever met told me this back around 1989. There are different ways to approach it, of course, but the linkage has to be there. As I've said before, a lot of it is common sense stuff & USM probably does some of it without knowing it. Do deans review enrollments over time, historical adjunct staffing levels, etc., when they are asked to approve new full-time positions in departments under their supervision? But there are plenty of "institutional effectiveness" decisions that aren't strictly tied to budget. When a department chair looks at a set of bad student evaluations or a horrible grade distro for an adjunct & decides not to employ that person in the future, that chair has closed the loop ... if the chair is working from a department objective that specifies a target for evaluation results or maximum withdrawal rate. (In this case, IE helps keep the department chair from being accused of making arbitrary & capricious decisions.) I'm sticking to some very basic examples here, because that is really where 99% of the things that can make a real difference for students takes place. But if we want to get "global" about it, had USM been working from a real IE plan all along, the nursing department would be in a lot better shape right now & the CISE wouldn't be fretting about NCATE, because there would've been "global" budgeting priorities set on those things. If there is a big "sell" for IE to the top brass, it shouldn't be fear of SACS. It should be that a bona fide system of planning, assessment & use of results lessens the need for "crisis management." Right now, USM appears (to the outside observer) to jump from one "crisis" to another without a lot of vision & direction. Maybe the top administration gets off on crisis management, I dunno, but it's really not a healthy thing for individual human beings or for organizations. The big stumbling block to all this is that a lot of administrators cherish having "discretionary money" & can be awfully reluctant to have to let that money out based on standards, justification & demonstrated needs. Human nature wants to be able to use "power" (in this case, money) to reward friends & penalize enemies. In a good IE system, decision making (including budget) has to be divorced from personalities & hooked back into research-driven justification of needs. That's one reason Shelby Thames needs to go back to the lab. He's forgotten what research-driven decision making is all about. "

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Agree 100%. I was reamed on another thread when I noted that the NCATE process has long been neglected here, which it has. And this applies to academic assessment in general. We do a mediocre job of assessing teaching at the classroom level, all the way to assessments at the institutional level (I think Brad put in overtime sweat equity to try to get us up to speed on some of this). When I examined some basic budget priorities across colleges and departments, such as graduate assistantship monies, I found inequities that were not data driven. Why? Well, the answer is that it has always been done that way--why let oneself be confused by  data?

Virtually all accreditation bodies have transitioned to outcomes or performance based assessments in the past decade (rather than input oriented assessments), and we have been behind the curve and are playing catch up across the board. What does this mean? It means that it is the department's, or unit's, or institution's responsibility to demonstrate to the accrediting body that a clear model exists, that we do what we say we are doing, and that the student outcomes are based on data and not opinion, reputation, or wishful thinking. And most important, to use those data to improve what we do. Stephen noted on a previous thread the dangers and pitfalls of performance based standards accreditation (especially when an institution is underfunded and the people are stretched to the limit). But this paradigm shift is here to stay. Time to take lemons and make some lemonade.

One of the biggest challenges is getting faculty and chairs on board. Faculty and chairs can get real ****ed when an e-mail requesting data that is needed yesterday arrives. Damn it, it looks just like a request I got last week! Unfortunately, until systems are in place at all levels to collect and manage data that produces reliable and valid information, such requests will go out all too often. In some ways, the SACS probation is a great news for us. It may (repeat may) energize everyone (students through upper admin) to where we need to be with data driven decision making at all levels.