Academic Program Assessment

Central to Berea College’s mission is the overarching goal to promote student learning in the most effective and engaging manner possible within a liberal arts tradition. Through the regular and systematic use of assessment practices, faculty continually strive to better know and understand not only what their students are learning, but also how well they are learning. Using this knowledge and understanding, faculty engage in a process of continual reflection and improvement that leads to a richer and more effective curriculum and/or program.

Berea’s outcomes assessment process is a comprehensive, three-year cycle of assessment that helps to ensure that programs adhere to the five principles of good assessment described above while also fulfilling our obligations to SACSCOC and other external accrediting agencies. At some point during each three-year assessment cycle, programs are expected to assess each of their student learning outcomes at least once and have used the results of their assessments to improve some aspect(s) of their program/curriculum. The process includes two categories of requirements – standing (or long-term) requirements (SLOs, curriculum maps, and three-year assessment plans) and annual reporting requirements documenting our assessment work.

Finally, Berea College has adopted the use of Taskstream to manage all portions of our assessment work, including assessment plans, annual reports, fourth-year reflections, and the collection of all evidence used for assessment.

In short, all academic programs at Berea College are expected to:

• Identify student learning outcomes specific to their discipline or major;
• conduct regular annual assessments of one or more student learning outcomes specific to each program; and
• use the results of these assessments to inform ongoing/continuous programmatic efforts to improve

The documents and forms below provide more details and examples of our process:

• Berea’s Outcomes Based Assessment Plan for Academic Programs
• Quick Reference for Our Revised Assessment Process
• Three Year Assessment Plan Template
• Sample Three Year Assessment Plan
• Sample Annual Summary Report
• Sample Curriculum Map
• Completed Assessment Reports (network password required)

Berea College | Lincoln Hall 303 | Berea, KY 40404 | 859-985-3416 | robert_smith@berea.edu