Focused visit update

February 23, 2005

Dear K-State Faculty, Staff, and Students,

We are very pleased to report that the Focused Visit on Assessment conducted by the North Central Association (NCA) of Colleges and Schools went exceptionally well. The verbal feedback we received at the exit interview on Tuesday morning with the evaluation team was extremely positive. All of the team members expressed how much they enjoyed their interactions with each person who participated in the meetings during their visit. The diligent work and tireless efforts during the last two years by all of our faculty, staff, and students to learn more about and implement assessment initiatives within their programs were instrumental to the successful outcome of this visit. The team was impressed with the ownership of assessment that many faculty members conveyed. We are deeply appreciative of both the individual and collective efforts you have made in furthering our assessment initiatives, because those efforts are the essence of our success in achieving our initial goals. We must continue to work together to sustain and build upon the momentum we have attained, as we move toward the maturing levels of continuous improvement expected by NCA.

In summary, the team indicated that K-State has made significant progress in establishing a sustainable program of assessment of student learning. They were very complimentary of the structures we have put into place and that will continue to provide support and expertise to departments for their assessment efforts. They noted that the K-State administrative leadership is committed to making assessment an integral part of the university culture, and that the enthusiastic involvement of student services in assessment is evident. We do need to make additional progress in the areas of assessment of our University General Education program and our distance learning programs, as well as utilize web services to extend the communication of programmatic student learning outcomes. These items will be included in some of the next steps we will implement.

We will receive a formal report in the next couple of months and, when we do, we will share that with the campus. Thank you again for the outstanding contributions you have made to our assessment efforts.

Sincerely,

M. Duane Nellis
Provost

Ruth A. Dyer
Associate Provost