Committee on Undergraduate Program Review (CUPR)
Reports
Date: August 4, 2003
To: James A. Anderson, Vice Provost
From: Susan M. Blanchard, Chair
Subject: Final Report, Committee on Undergraduate Program Review (CUPR), 2002-2003
The Committee on Undergraduate Academic Program Review (CUPR) has had another busy and successful year. Once again, there was no disruption in work from one academic year to the next as the dedicated members of CUPR continued their efforts throughout the summer even though many were not economically supported by NC State during that time. A second retreat was held with Peggy Maki on May 16-17, 2002. The focus of the retreat was on what CUPR needed to do to keep the continuous assessment process moving forward at NC State as required by SACS and as best serves our faculty and programs.
CUPR spent much of the previous academic year (2001-2002) training faculty on the development of objectives and outcomes and assessment plans. At the and of the year, all undergraduate programs except for those that only offered minors were asked to submit their assessment plans, which included their objectives and outcomes, by May 15th for early review or by August 15th for fall review. In June 2002, CUPR had a training session at Marilee Bresciani's house to help norm evaluators on the process of evaluating assessment plans. Material from programs that had submitted by the May deadline were reviewed by teams of CUPR evaluators over the summer. A final session was held at Jo Allen's house in August to further ensure that all reviews were conducted comparably. Written reviews were distributed to the early participants in late August. During the fall of 2002, new CUPR review teams were created from previously trained and new members, and the assessment plans that were received in the fall semester were reviewed. Additional assessment plans were reviewed in 2003. Ultimately, a total of 71 programs had their assessment plans, including their objectives and outcomes, reviewed and received meaningful feedback from CUPR.
During the fall of 2002, members of CUPR worked with staff from the Division of Undergraduate Affairs to provide workshops for several colleges to assist them in continuing the assessment process. Dr. Virginia Lee provided information to CUPR on course-based assessment during one fall meeting. On December 11th, members of CUPR participated in a workshop on course-based assessment with members of the Council on Undergraduate Education (CUE) and the University Courses and Curricula Committee (UCCC). After reviewing assessment plans, exemplary programs were identified, and these programs (Foreign Languages and Literatures from CHASS, Forest Management from CNR, Agricultural and Extension Education from CALS, and Civil Engineering from COE) presented aspects of their undergraduate academic program review process to the Deans' Council during the spring of 2003. In April 2003, many members of CUPR participated in the Assessment Symposium that was hosted by the Division of Undergraduate Affairs and organized by Marilee Bresciani.
Several important issues were addressed by CUPR during 2002-2003: (1) How should colleges be prepared for the college-level process of Undergraduate Academic Program Review (UAPR)? (2) Are the guidelines for UAPR appropriate as written now that we have actually begun the process? (3) What type of interim reporting should be required (if any) within a program's review cycle? (4) When should minors be reviewed? (5) How should the UAPR timetable be revised given that there are no reviews currently scheduled for years 6 and 7 of the 7-year review cycle?
The issue concerning how colleges should be prepared was partially addressed by a recommendation that the guidelines be revised to establish that the college is responsible for reviewing content and that CUPR is responsible for reviewing process - a strategy that keeps program content in the hands of the faculty. During the 2003-2004 academic year, college-level committees will be offered assistance in developing plans for the college level review of submitted portfolios. The recommended change was not incorporated into the guidelines because the issue of whether the current guidelines are appropriate (item 2) was deferred until the 2003-2004 academic year.
As part of the process of developing guidelines for interim reporting, CUPR recommended that programs submit reports on closing the loop on one outcome by May 2003 for early review or by August 2003 for fall review. A half-day training session was held on May 9th to train reviewers on how to evaluate these reports. A second session was held on June 30th to complete the reviews on two programs as part of the process of norming review standards across 3-person review teams. The issue of interim reporting will be revisited during the 2003-2004 academic year after the closing the loop reports have been reviewed.
Discussion on when minors should be reviewed will also continue during 2003-2004 since the guidelines for and descriptions of a minor are currently being revised. At the present time, it is difficult for some programs to know which students are completing their minor, which, in turn, makes it difficult to assess whether the program is successful in meeting its objectives and outcomes. With the introduction of the Plan of Work and the Progress toward Degree Regulation, it will be easier for programs to track students following a given minor.
The last issue involving the UAPR timetable will also be discussed during the coming academic year. One suggestion was to assess freestanding minors (i.e. those that exist in departments that do not offer any comparable major) during years 6 and 7 of the current timetable. As the UAPR process enters the second round of reviews, there will probably be no years in which no programs are scheduled for review since many programs, e.g. all engineering programs, will not be on 7-year cycles due to the cycle that is in place for their external accreditation agency.
Although it appears as though many issues were left unresolved from 2002-2003 and carried over into 2003-2004, much valuable discussion occurred, and the members of CUPR were very close to reaching consensus on these items. In addition, CUPR completed its first program review (Textile and Apparel Technology and Management) as its last official act of the 2002-2003 academic year. The lessons learned from this review will help inform the committee as it continues to address unresolved issues in the coming academic year.
