Submitted Fall, 2003
During the spring semester of 2003, the Women's Studies Program began implementation of its new assessment plan. For this semester, the plan consisted of three parts: the survey for previous graduates of the program, evaluation of senior seminar papers, and focus group discussions.
Because this assessment data is based on only one semester, and because the department feels that the assessment plan itself needs improvement, it has decided to make no program modifications at this time.
While the Women's Studies program is justifiably pleased with the early assessment results in many categories, it is also clear that our assessment plan needs additional work before it can adequately evaluate the success of our students in achieving the designated learning objectives. Mainly, the WSAC believes that the current assessment plan is too complex. Particularly troublesome is the way we evaluate the senior seminar research paper. There are two problems with our assessment rubric. One problem is that the rubric was difficult for some of the evaluators to use. Secondly, there is a problem, because those reading the papers are not always familiar with the methodologies and the subject matter the students wrote about. The WSAC will address these issues at it's Spring 2004 meetings.