Assistant Director for Assessment Kimberly Fath and Executive Director of Institutional Effectiveness Rob Springer present at 15th Annual NCICU Assessment Conference at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C.
Assistant Director for Assessment Kimberly Fath and Executive Director of Institutional Effectiveness Rob Springer shared knowledge in three sessions at the 15 Annual Assessment Conference of the North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities (NCICU) held June 11-12, 2019, at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C.
Fath led a half-day workshop titled "Foundations of Assessment of Student Learning." This working session included strategies for articulating intended learning outcomes for curricular and co-curricular programs as well as the uses of different types of curricular maps and their use in assessment practice. The workshop emphasized the importance of local ownership of assessment practices and the relationship between assessment activity and curricular effectiveness.
Fath also presented a conference session titled "Assessing Campus Climate: Definitions and Methods." This session explored campus climate from the conceptual literature and its application to assessment work with an emphasis on inclusive practices. The session included a review of how Elon’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment updates demographic questions annually to reflect an evolving understanding of social identities such as gender, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity.
Springer conducted a session titled "A Review of Elon’s 5-Year Interim Report" which provided an overview of the process employed by Elon for its recent 5 Year Report to the university’s regional accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the Council on Colleges (SACSCOC). The session included a description of the planning process, a description of how the university demonstrated compliance in the areas of academic program effectiveness and improvement, and covered standards that explicitly require alignment with an institution’s mission statement.
The NCICU Assessment Conference was founded in the mid-2000s and is open to both private and public postsecondary institutions in North Carolina and nearby states. Elon University was the site for the first conference in 2005 and has hosted a total of four times, most recently in 2014.