Assessment in Student Development and Enrollment Management

The Division of Student Development and Enrollment Management at William Paterson University has always sought to determine the effectiveness of its programs as it relates to student satisfaction.  Two years ago, sparked by an assessment symposium sponsored by the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), we began to focus on assessment of student learning outcomes.

At the fifth annual Student Development Retreat, in January 2007, the entire Division came together to develop a common understanding of how student learning outcomes relate to student development work.  Utilizing key university documents as our guide (University Mission Statement, Division Mission Statement, Student Success Plan), we identified the relevant goals and values from these documents, and assisted Directors in understanding how to construct learning objectives for their departments, as well as how to identify appropriate means of assessing the actual learning outcomes of students who engage in their programs and activities. Over the course of the spring 2007, Directors wrote and revised their first Assessment Plans with the guidance and assistance of a Division-wide Assessment Team, comprised of interested and dedicated staff members from across our Division.

Academic year 2007-2008 saw the implementation of these assessment plans. Interim results were reported to the Assessment Team in March, with final reports submitted in June. At both junctures, the Team provided constructive feedback to departments. This helped with mid-course modifications, and was a source of suggestions for the construction of their next assessment plans for 2008-2009. Those plans are presently under construction. Now that departments have a better understanding of how to assess learning outcomes, we intend to expand our assessment horizons. While some departments, based on their findings or in some cases unexpected difficulties encountered in carrying out their projects, will follow up on or expand this past year’s results, others will assess other aspects of their activities, or focus on assessment related to the CAS standards. Still others hope to create collaborative assessment work with their divisional and academic colleagues on projects and activities that they’ve already been collaborating on but have never assessed in a collaborative fashion. Future results and findings will be posted to this website.

From this page you may navigate to a table which provides a summary of the results of each learning objective assessed by the Departments within our division.