Center Assessment Guidelines

Because the product of this self-assessment is foremost a planning document, the first step is for the center's staff to articulate agreed-upon goals and general strategies for achieving the goals that form the basis of the center's work. This step likely was accomplished during the founding of the center. However, it is important that each center's staff revisit the essential purpose of the center and that they do so in the context of the University's three-part mission in 1) undergraduate and graduate learning and instruction, 2) research and scholarship and 3) service.

Undergraduate and Graduate Learning and Instruction

This assessment document should describe the connections between the center and the University's teaching and learning mission. That is, how does the center contribute to departmental or school/college or University-wide academic programs, whether undergraduate or graduate. Not all centers are directly connected to teaching and learning, so there will be a wide variety of responses from center to center across campus. Yet to the extent appropriate the center should summarize the basic strategies, both curricular and co-curricular (e.g., research assistantships and internships), that it employs to contribute to student learning.

Research and Scholarship

The document should concisely summarize the main goals for the various research and scholarship efforts of the center and its staff. Because centers vary considerably in their basic purposes, this section also will vary from center to center. Some centers have as their core missions pure research; others are essentially auxiliary operations that rely on research and development work that may or may not be accomplished by the center's staff. Either way, the objective for this document is to describe, in language that communicates to audiences outside the discipline, the center's overall research agenda and general strategies for accomplishing it. The document should not describe every research project and scholarly product, though accomplishments may be included in an appendix. A successful document will provide administrators and other audiences external to the center with a clear summary of the center's current research and scholarship and, more importantly, a view of where the center staff would like to be in the near future.

Service

The service component of a center's work will depend on how the center defines "service" and may include extension and other outreach efforts, service to the institution, service to the discipline, and more. The key to this section is for the center to specify what kinds of service are expected of its staff, what the service is intended to accomplish, and the general strategies for coordinating service efforts. Again, the section should be a concise summary - not a list of activities - as well as a plan for coming years, all written for the administrators and external audiences.

While those broad areas of inquiry should be addressed, a few basic issues remain to be covered. Each center should examine its strengths within a context that combines the center's founding mission, its current reason for being (if the mission has evolved over time), and the University's fundamental areas of emphasis—teaching and learning, research and scholarship, and service. Toward those ends, the document should follow this structure:

1. A brief history of the center (a few paragraphs) should cite its founding mission and reasons for any changes in that mission.
2. If the center has undertaken a review in the past, the self-assessment should address subsequent actions taken in response to that review, including a description of progress made.
3. The document should include basic descriptions of center activities for the previous five-year period, linking those activities to the three-part mission of the University where appropriate.
4. The assessment should include a budget profile to include all revenue, expenses, and funding sources (G.O. and external), as well as budget projections for coming years. The time span to be included will vary depending on the age and future of the center.
5. The document should cite resources, including products and services, that the center has provided the campus, community, region, and state. In addition, the assessment should cite courses, conferences, programs, or other benefits that have been (or shall be) shared by the center and with whom.

In general, the document should demonstrate the current strengths of the center and aspects of the center that call for improvement. While appendices may be attached that cite specific budget figures and accomplishments of a center and its staff, the basic text of the document will likely be no more than ten to twelve pages.

A few more points of clarification:

1. No external review is required by the University, although that remains an option for centers should there be good reason for them to go to that expense and effort.
2. Because the primary purpose of the Program Assessment document is to communicate the center's goals and strategies effectively to administrators and other external audiences, please avoid discipline-specific language and terminology.
3. Whether your center opts for the new process or the old, documents describing centers selected for 2009-2010 are due in the Provost's office by July 1, 2010, unless an extension has been requested.

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