Academic program assessment has been a fixture in Missouri higher education for the last fifteen years and has continuously evolved throughout that time. The ongoing interest of the Missouri Coordinating Board for Higher Education in assessment, together with commitments made in Southeast’s strategic plan and the elevation of academic assessment to a prominent place in accreditation by the North Central Association dictate that we focus our attention seriously on the quality and effectiveness of our assessment programs. The most concise and comprehensive description of academic assessment now available is a publication of the North Central Accreditation Commission on Institutions of Higher Education: Cecilia L. Lopez, Opportunities for Improvement: Advice from Consultant-Evaluators on Programs to Assess Student Learning. You received a copy at the summer 1997 Chairpersons Retreat, and I recommend it to you as a clear and helpful reference. I also hope that the following set of questions and answers, specific to assessment at Southeast, will serve as a helpful guide for reviewing, implementing, and reporting your department’s assessment program.

• 1. What is a departmental assessment program?

• 2. What should be included in the department’s list of educational objectives?

• 3. Who should be assessed?

• 4. How can the department insure that all students are assessed? What if students don’t want to participate?

• 5. What if an appropriate nationally normed test of achievement in the major is not available?

• 6. Can you be more specific about acceptable and unacceptable measures of student learning?

• 7. Is one good measure of student learning enough to satisfy the assessment requirement?

• 8. Whatever happened to value-added?

• 9. Can you be more specific about standards? How do you set up and apply standards in assessment?

• 10. How can I add assessment to the already busy schedules of my faculty and students?

• 11. When and where do I report the results of assessment?

• 12. What should be included in the assessment report?

• 13. Who will read my assessment report?

• 14. If the UARC already has the department plan on file, why do I need to include it in the annual report?

• 15. Are there required formats for reporting data?

• 16. What do you mean by analysis and interpretation?

• 17. Do I have to use the results of assessment for the purpose of improvement?