Published: April 16, 2021

The academic assessment steering committee, led by Katherine Eggert, senior vice provost for academic planning and assessment, has been spending the spring semester studying the various levels of student learning assessment already occurring on campus. The committee has also been meeting with assessment leads across campus with proven student learning assessment track records to understand the methods and mechanics behind their success.

“We’ve found that there are many successful efforts across campus for setting learning goals and assessing their success, some of them longstanding and some of them recently started,” said Eggert. “What CU Boulder does not yet have, however, is a way of coordinating those efforts and sharing best practices.”

The charter of the academic assessment steering committee, composed of CU Boulder faculty and staff members with experience as academic assessment and student data practitioners, is to study what it will take to establish a campuswide culture of assessing CU Boulder’s academic offerings and student academic achievement.

During CU Boulder’s reaccreditation process in academic year 2019–20, both the university and its accrediting agency, the Higher Learning Commission, identified the regular collection and use of student outcomes assessment data to improve learning and student support as an unmet priority across many of the university’s academic programs. They noted that consistent, cross-campus assessment efforts are essential to improving student success. 

“The committee’s goal is to make recommendations to the provost that will guide the development of a campus culture of learning assessment over the next several years,” Eggert added.