General Preamble:  In order to better achieve the University mission and to comply fully with the requirements for SACS accreditation and those of the Central office of the Board of Regents, all academic programs must be reviewed periodically following an agreed upon timetable and in accordance with the following general guidelines; furthermore, it must be stressed that the broadest guiding principle for program evaluation should be that the purpose of the review is the improvement of programs according to the stated outcomes of that programs and of the mission of the institution.

I. Purpose

The purposes of undertaking program review at the State University of West Georgia are as follows:

· To improve the quality of instruction, academic courses, faculty research, and public service by periodically evaluating their relative success in relation to stated goals.
· To involve faculty, staff, administrators, and outside agencies as appropriate in order to conduct an open, thorough, fair, and valid assessment of programs.
· To employ both quantitative and qualitative data in arriving at conclusions.
· To conduct the review in such a way as to minimize the burden to the unit and minimize any impediment to instructional capacity.
· To guide the review according to the missions of both the University and the unit and to extant institutional priorities.
· To develop an action plan based on the results of the review.
· To follow up one year after the review to assess the effectiveness of the action plan.

II. Review Responsibility

The responsibility for the review of an academic program lies with the faculty of the unit that actually enacts the program.  The review shall be conducted by a committee of the unit to be submitted to the unit supervisor(s) then to the University-level Program Review Advisory Committee (PRAC) before final dispensation by the Vice President for Academic Affairs.  PRAC may be consulted at any time concerning the format or policies and procedures for the review.  PRAC may be useful for identifying helpful resources such as books, guides, and web sites.

III. PRAC Membership

The PRAC will be composed of at least seven tenured faculty members:  3 from Arts and Sciences (one from each of the following general areas:  humanities, social sciences, and sciences), 2 from Business, and 2 from Education.  Two more faculty members may be added if the PRAC deems it necessary to conduct a fair and efficient assessment of the programs under review.  PRAC will determine the college and area represented by these additional members.

IV. Process of Evaluation

An academic program shall be defined as any grouping of academic courses that form a part of a degree or certificate program.  Generally these shall be conducted by academic departments housing those programs; thus a major, a minor and a concentration may each be programs within a department and should all be reviewed at the same time by that department.  (For example, the major, minor, and concentration in history should be reviewed by the History Department at the same time.)  On the other hand, some programs don’t reside in single departments (e.g. Core Curriculum, American Studies, Interdisciplinary Programs) and thus have to be reviewed by a committee formed for that purpose by the VPAA and academic Deans.

All academic programs are subject to review and are to be reviewed every five years using the following policies and procedures.

· The Deans and the VPAA shall agree upon a list of programs to be reviewed during the subsequent year.  (The constitution of the timetable should take into consideration other obligations the unit may have to fulfill such as external accreditation visits.)  The timetable may also be affected by actions of the Central Office of the Board of Regents.
· The Dean and the Department must agree on the membership of the departmental review committee.
· The Department Chair is to be considered a part of the unit and may serve on the departmental committee.
· If the academic program contains a graduate school component, then the Dean of the Graduate School shall be consulted for a review of that component.
· At the discretion of the Dean, a committee external to the Departmental Committee may be established to examine the Departmental Review and make recommendations concerning changes before the review is submitted to the Department as a whole.
· If an external review is established, the Departmental Committee shall conduct a self-study, data accumulation, and a preliminary report for the External Review.
· The External Reviewer will visit the department and write a report based upon an assessment of the department’s self-study and the visit and forward the report to the Department.
· The Departmental Committee shall write a final report to submit to the Department as a whole for revisions.
· After making revisions suggested by the department, the Committee will submit the report to the college Dean (and the Dean of the Graduate School when appropriate.
· The Dean(s) will then forward the report with the Dean’s assessment and comments to the PRAC.
· The PRAC will make a summary review and recommendations based upon all the previous supports and supporting information and submit the entire portfolio to the VPAA.
· The VPAA will write a report of comments and recommendations upon the report submitted by the PRAC and forward to the President.  Copies of this report go back to each reviewing level.

V. Information Base for the Review

Self-study by the unit (to include faculty vitae, surveys of students, annual reports)
Critique by external review, if used.
Action plan linked to the recommendations of the review
Critique by administrator(s) to whom the unit reports
Critique by a university faculty committee (PRAC)
Critique by the VPAA
One-year follow-up on action plan.

Role of Accreditation Reports:  Extensive accreditation reports, such as those required by AACSB or NCATE, if timely, should be used wherever appropriate and to whatever extent appropriate, as supporting documentation or as a partial substitution of the report.
 

VI. Faculty Involvement in Evaluation Process

All faculty may be involved in the departmental committee.
The membership of PRAC shall be restricted to tenured faculty.
Faculty will also provide part of the information base (for example, vitae, publications, grant documents, and student surveys).

VII. Format of the Report

The Program Review Report must adhere to the UWG Program Review Manual Guidelines; however, units may exercise some discretion in adapting extant materials and conditions to fit the report guideline.

VIII. Criteria for the Review

The following criteria for review are those the Board of Regents have posed as the key issues for program review; they also happen to be fairly typical criteria of program review guidelines across the country.

Quality
Refers to the quality of the unit’s practices for achieving its mission: teaching and learning experiences, benchmark comparisons, and service and research programming.

Program Faculty
The level of engagement of the full-time faculty in the possession, maintenance, and improvement of the program.  The nature of integrated research and scholarly activity is particularly relevant here.

Centrality
A relative criteria for the “fit” between a program’s mission and the mission of the institution.

Utility
The functionality and demand for the program by students and others outside the department in which it is offered.

Vitality
Refers to the level of engagement with current trends and research in curriculum, integration of technology, and university-community interactivity.

Cost Efficiency
Relative level of cost of program per student level.  These figures need to be normed by comparing the costs to those of similar institutions and to the specified demands of the institution.