Graduate Assessment at a Predominantly Undergraduate Institution

Abstract

"This project focuses on improving graduate program assessment at a primarily undergraduate-serving liberal arts college. The university has 38 different graduate programs across 6 different schools. Most of the programs lack proficiency exams, a thesis, or other universal culminating experiences. Some are 4+1 programs and many cater to working professionals, and students begin their programs at different points of the year. These conditions have made developing manageable, systematic assessment challenging.

In this project, assessment at the graduate level is improved with two main efforts. The first is by providing expanded resources on Educational Assessment targeting graduate programs. The second is working directly with each program to establish or modify assessment plans and, helping programs develop new approaches to assessment, including, for example, the use of portfolio methods for program-level assessment. These efforts aim to have 75% of programs develop assessment plans by the end of the 2022-2023 academic year."