Departmental Assessment

When the Student Affairs Division's 1994-1998 strategic plan was developed, each department was required to develop an assessment plan to conduct at least one of each of the following types of assessment projects during the planning period:

* Demographic studies -- to profile and monitor service population(s);
* Needs assessments -- to determine needs of students for departmental services and programs;
* Customer satisfaction -- to evaluate opinions and satisfaction of consumers who currently use departmental services and programs;
* External comparison (benchmarks) -- to compare programs and services provided by peer institutions or competitive providers and the department; and
* Impact assessment (outcomes) -- to determine the impact of services or programs provided to students.

With the implementation of a new strategic planning cycle for 1999 through 2004, assessment has been fully integrated into the planning process. The 1999-2004 Strategic Plan focuses on the improvement of core processes; Student Affairs departments must document assessment methods used to measure progress towards specific performance targets. If appropriate assessments are not in place, departments must first implement assessment strategies to collect baseline data before implementing process improvement strategies.

In the summer of 2001, departments were asked to update their departmental assessment plans and provide a summary report to the Vice President for Student Affairs. As before, departments were required to have in place assessments addressing the above five types of assessment. Departments were also encouraged to adding three additional types of assessment:

* Student Cultures/Campus Environments
* National standards
* Cost effectiveness

Department were asked to report assessment plans through FY 2004 using the above form