Assessment Leadership Academy

The 8th cohort of WSCUC’s Assessment Leadership Academy gathered at Cal Poly Pomona January 18 and 19 for their final meeting, and the group has completed the program. There are now more than 250 graduates of the ALA and preparations are underway to welcome the 9th cohort in 2018-2019.

Educational Programs Workshops

In January and February, Educational Programs hosted four workshops in Southern California.

Natasha Jankowski and David Marshall from the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) facilitated an Assignment Design Charrette on January 16 to strengthen student assignments that participants brought to the session for workshopping. The work of the day allowed for insights to be shared about teaching and learning, and a wide range of ideas and practices were generated about assignments as building blocks for coherent learning pathways for students. The next day Linda Suskie presented Building a Culture of Quality in a retreat format that provided opportunity for teams of institutional leaders to craft strategies around developing cultures of evidence and improvement on their campuses.

On February 1 at Pitzer College, Marguerite Bonous-Hammarth from UC Irvine and Joe Slowensky from Chapman University presented a new workshop, The Diverse Campus: Intersecting Access and Equity Across the Student Experience to provide faculty, staff, and administrators with tools to improve equity, access, and inclusion on their campus. On February 2 Amy Driscoll, co-facilitator of the Assessment Leadership Academy, and June Madsen Clausen from University of San Francisco (and ALA alumna) presented Assessment 201: Advanced Topics in Assessment.

The final workshops of the 2017-2018 academic year – Assessment 101 and The Learning Institution – will take place May 17 and 18 at Chaminade University in Honolulu, Hawai’i. More information is available here.

2018 Academic Resource Conference

WSCUC’s 2018 Academic Resource Conference will take place April 25 – 27 in Burlingame, CA. The conference will explore Future Perfect – what can we do now to create the future we envision for higher education? Plenary sessions feature addresses by American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell, Association of American of Colleges and & Universities President Lynn Pasquerella, WSCUC President Jamienne S. Studley, and a stellar policy panel. The ARC will also host pre-conference workshops, a Showcase on Teaching and Learning, and range of lively concurrent sessions. Please visit the ARC website here to see the entire lineup.

Community of Practice

WSCUC continues to develop and facilitate its Community of Practice (COP) as part of a Lumina Foundation funded initiative to advance the visibility of learning outcomes. The COP, composed of teams from WSCUC institutions, is designed to increase leadership, institutional capacity, and visibility in learning outcomes assessment. The third convening of the COP will be held on April 25th at the 2018 ARC, with Jennifer Lyons from Evergreen Data as the keynote speaker. For more information, please visit the Community of Practice website here.

Staff contact: David Chase