Program Review
Academic Program Review
University of West Georgia
Overview and History
The University originally formed a plan for systematic periodic program review in 1995-1996. That original plan called for a self study to be conducted by each unit and for an external critique of the self study. The University created a rotation cycle in which approximately one fifth of our academic programs would undergo review each year.
Though some departments conducted extensive assessments of their programs under this original plan, changes in the Board of Regents' mandate for comprehensive program review led to alterations. In 2000-2001 a Program Review Advisory Committee, chaired by the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, was created to develop a new plan for comprehensive program review. This committee, with the advice of a number of colleagues from across the University, completed a draft proposal for a new plan in spring 2001.
This proposed plan emphasizes the role of periodic review in complying fully with the requirements for SACS accreditation and the requirements of the Central Office of the Board of Regents. However, it also stresses that the broadest guiding principle for program evaluation is the improvement of programs according to their stated outcomes and in the role such assessment plays in achieving the mission of the University. Additional goals in the creation of the plan were to take full advantage of reviews already conducted for accreditation and annual reports so as to avoid duplication of work to the greatest extent possible and to streamline the reporting process to make communication easier.
Slight revisions were made after review of the proposal by deans, associate deans, and the Vice President for Academic Affairs. The plan has now been submitted to the Committee on Academic Policies and Procedures. We have also submitted this plan along with the cycle of programs to be reviewed over the next five years as a draft to the Board’s Central Office (this cycle was created through collaboration between the Vice President for Academic Affairs and the academic deans).
Below are some highlights of the Plan. The entire plan may be accessed here: Plan for Academic Program Review
- Programs will undertake periodic program review every five years (in line with accreditation reviews and updates)
- Triggered programs have to be reviewed within the next three years—departments that have triggered programs will generally review all programs in the same year. For an explanation of the "trigger" please see the Program Review Cycle.
- The department will form a review committee to conduct a self study. At the dean’s discretion, an external review of this committee’s report may be put in place before the report is submitted to the dean. This external review committee may be formed entirely of faculty within the University. Given that so many of our programs undergo external reviews (SACS, NCATE, AACSB, etc.), the original call for external critiques of programs has been modified on the assumption that such decisions are better left at the level of the college. In addition to the self study (based on annual reports, faculty vitae, any surveys of students used by the program, other data accumulation relevant to assessment, etc.), departments will submit an Action Plan based on the self study. Subsequently, the report will be critiqued by:
- The Academic Dean
- The Program Review Advisory Committee
- the Vice President for Academic Affairs
The department will provide a follow up on action plan one year later
Criteria for the assessment will include the following: Quality, Program Faculty, Centrality, Utility, Vitality, Cost Efficiency (this last provided by IRP). Definitions for each of these are included in the plan.
What Next?
Only two departments have programs undergoing Regents’ review this year: Computer Science and Psychology. Both are undergoing or have recently undertaken comprehensive reviews for external bodies, so they are well underway with generating information.
We need to design a template for reports that helps us achieve our goal of taking advantage of existing data and avoiding duplication of work to the greatest extent possible.
We need to form a Program Review Advisory Committee. While our plan as it currently exists calls for participation by all faculty at the unit level, it sets certain limits on who can be a member or PRAC and the makeup of the committee: tenured faculty only, at least seven members: 3 from Arts and Sciences (one each from humanities, social sciences, and sciences), 2 from business, and 2 from education. Two more may be added if the PRAC feel it necessary to conduct a fair and efficient assessment of the programs under review.
We must create the UWG Program Review Manual, a work alluded to in the plan and soon to be in progress that will provide guidelines and other useful information to aid the process of systematic program assessment.
