Academic Affairs

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities has published its list of the top-ten policy issues that will be facing higher education in 2008. Here they are:

1. Affordability
2. States’ Fiscal Forecasts
3. College Preparation
4. Accountability
5. Campus Security
6. Immigration
7. 2008 Presidential Election
8. Affirmative Action
9. Re-tooling State Financial Aid Programs
10. Economic Development

During the last few months, we’ve spent considerable time at Keene State College on all of these (although AASCU has something different in mind with Number 7). We’ve spent a huge amount of time on issues of affordability, accountability, campus safety and economic development. We have had some amazing discussions and changed many things.

What intrigued me as I read the list is just how profoundly the national landscape for higher education is having an impact on what’s happening at Keene State College. We are certainly not alone in facing the issues confronting higher education. But we have tended to take them on at our own pace and in our own fashion. Barbara Brittingham, Director of the NEASC Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, once suggested to me that this was part of the “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire/New England tradition. I think there is truth in this.

So, what’s happening? I think we have come to a point where we have a president, campus leadership, and faculty and staff who have realized that we have a place in the national dialogue around higher education. We are beginning to embrace the national issues because we want to have a voice in the debate. And we should. We have strong leaders in many of AASCU’s Top Ten, and much to contribute.

It’s great to travel to conferences and hear people say, “I understand that great things are happening at Keene.” On several occasions, faculty and staff from my previous institution have emailed me to let me know how impressed they were with a KSC presentation they attended at a conference.

We’ve got people listening, and now we need to use our voice. We should be knowledgeable about the issues confronting higher education, we should embrace them, and we should respond locally and globally. 

Tags: aascu, access, accountability, assessment, policy by enetzhammer // No Comments »

In the last three years I have participated as part of a New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc. Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, or NEASC for short, accreditation team on site visits to two institutions. This year in November I will be going on another one, but this time under the new standards adopted in January 2006. I recently attended a standards training session and specifically met with other librarians who will be assessing institutions on their ability to express their work on Standard Seven Library and Other Information Resources and Standard Ten Public Disclosure. I do not know why NEASC always pairs those two standards and gives them to one individual to review, but they do. How understanding libraries and academic technologies equates with marketing and web presence is a logical disconnect for me. Still it is my assignment and each time I do it I learn so much about how colleges and universities work, how interconnected all of our work is, and how varied and yet similar educational institutions accomplish their tasks.

Another benefit of working with the NEASC materials is the insight I gain looking toward our own institution’s next NEASC site visit in 2010. With the revised standards we have a lot of work to do to make seamless and transparent our interconnectedness. For example, what’s not new with the new standards is that they are purposely constructed ambiguously since they are mission-centric, intended to be aspirational and to be met at least minimally, non-prescriptive (only three numbers are prescribed in all of the standards), largely qualitative, include evaluation for improvement and are intended to help the institution anticipate the future. What are new sections are heightened emphases on educational quality and student success, program review, institutional capacity, role of the governing board, public disclosure and institutional effectiveness.

Institutional effectiveness is expressed as balancing inputs, processes and outcomes. NEASC does not proscribe one way to do this assessment. They acknowledge that there are multiple valid approaches to measuring student success. They know that not every measure is appropriate for every institution. But they do require that institutions do some kind of measurement(s) and explain why they are doing that approach. Every standard now has as the last numbered paragraph references to institutional effectiveness.

Since one of my review areas is Public Disclosure, it is interesting to note that there are some new items that NEASC looks for institutions to disclose including: statements of goals for students’ education and success in achieving those goals; rates of retention and graduation and other measures of student success; passage rates for licensure exams; total cost of education; and availability of academic and other support services. There’s a new “Public Disclosure ‘checklist’” that breaks down each piece of Standard Ten and requires an institution to list the URL or print publication where that piece of information is available.

As we go through the process of creating our four-year institutional effectiveness plans, it is not too soon to look at the NEASC standards and think about how your program or unit’s assessment plan will address your particular standard’s institutional effectiveness section. There might not be a fit, since NEASC isn’t prescriptive and is constructed ambiguously to give us the latitude to do our work in the way that makes the best sense for our institution. Still it doesn’t hurt to take a look and know what will need to be addressed in the future.

Page One Public Disclosure Checklist
Page Two Public Disclosure Checklist

Tags: NEASC, assessment by irene // No Comments »

NEASC (www.neasc.org) had a daylong event in Boston on Tuesday to more or less do a reality check about public disclosure, assessment, institutional effectiveness and, oh yes, accountability. The meeting was equal parts helpful and frustrating. My frustration was with my colleagues who still can’t get beyond what they see as the unfairness of the accountability movement. It’s here, it’s been here, it will be here. (And I don’t think for a second that any leadership changes in D.C. will have a dramatic impact on all this.) We simply must play in this world, and no amount of complaining is going to change that. I’ve vented, and now I’ll move on.

People on campus have asked me about my bulldozer push into the world of assessment. I should note first and foremost that I advocate for assessment because I think it is the right thing to do. I have seen departments and programs reinvented in miraculous ways when the faculty came together and embraced assessment. I think we have a responsibility to measure what our students are learning and how effective all of our units are in meeting the outcomes we set for ourselves.

The external forces are huge here, too. There is nothing inherently wrong in the people who fund us (legislators, taxpayers, parents and students, themselves) holding us accountable. Without a doubt, much of the work on accountability in higher education has failed to consider the goals and processes of higher ed. But the goals are not insidious.

If I’m pushing for better assessment on our campus, it’s because I think it’s the right thing for us. If I’m pushing particularly hard, it’s because of the external forces at play. The Secretary of Education is applying huge pressure for colleges to get their act together around assessment. But in the end, it’s not just politics, it’s pragmatism. Our NEASC visit is right around the corner. We’re fast coming up on the self-study. We need to demonstrate that we have a command of institutional effectiveness and that we are making improvements based on the information we’re collecting. And so we shall.

I think we actually have a solid infrastructure in place. As we’ve prepared for the 4-credit conversion, we’ve revised all of our programs and made them assessment ready. Awesome! We’ve been doing a fair amount already. Much of what we need to do is better coordinating of work we do and institutionalizing these processes. And, of course, people are in very different places around this.

Which brings me to the helpful piece of the NEASC meeting. Demonstration of institutional effectiveness is still largely driven by the institution itself with the guidance of the regional accrediting body (in our case, NEASC). The meeting on Tuesday gave us better guidance and some options. I will write about the Voluntary System of Accountability being promoted by AASCU and NASULGC, but I’m impressed with how the VSA helps us to frame and control the debate. The current report is worth a read (http://www.nasulgc.org/vsa-8-31-06.pdf).

So, we don’t have a choice. That really doesn’t matter because it’s the right thing for Keene State College, and this is the right time.

Tags: academic priorities, accountability, assessment by enetzhammer // 1 Comment »