Plan for Assessing Student Success
Introduction
The purpose of education at Georgia Perimeter College [GPC] is to provide students with a solid foundation for intellectual development and an ability and desire to make contributions to society. As a public institution, GPC strives to develop students who are well-informed, effective citizens; who actively participate in civic and community affairs; who cultivate self-awareness; who appreciate the arts; and who will pursue lifelong learning. GPC also provides opportunities to students to develop leadership skills and artistic abilities.
It has been said that colleges have three curricula: the one that appears in the catalog, the one that professors teach, and the one that students actually learn. To what degree does the curriculum asserted on paper or imagined by deans and faculty accurately portray what goes on in the minds of students? Making the three curricula visible to determine that students are actually learning what we teach is the business of assessment, an activity practiced by every division at Georgia Perimeter College.
Effective July 1, 1996, GPC underwent monumental organizational and governance changes. Included in these changes was a new mission statement, new planning goals, budgetary process changes, policymaking changes, and decision-making changes. The decentralization of the College's organization and decision making created the need to totally revise the assessment process that had been operational to that point. As a result, over the next two years the College developed a new mission statement, a new strategic plan and process, revisions to its General Education Outcomes, a new academic and non-academic assessment process, a new shared governance procedure, new Institutional Factors of Success, and a new program review procedure.
The current efforts to assess educational offerings are both top-down and bottom-up processes, involving appropriate constituencies at every level. The primary guiding document is the Mission Statement and all key assessment documents are drawn from its dictates. The assessment and planning of academic programs is multi-dimensional. The base document of the Mission statement has been used to develop strategic plans, the General Education Outcomes, the Institutional Factors of Success, and the academic unit assessment plans. From each of these plans, the College takes information drawn from assessment, and in turn uses it to close the loop from assessment efforts made. Reports from the CTL and the Office of Institutional Research and Planning along with the other assessment documents, are used by units from top to bottom in annual planning, both budgetary, operational and curriculum directed. At the executive level, for example, assessment data collected during the year is used at the annual planning retreat for revisions to the strategic and operational plans. An additional external factor influencing all assessment planning is the Chancellor's Office of the Board of Regents. Much of the planning has been created to draw from BOR strategic initiatives.
Modified: