Academic Affairs
Ashok Ramasubramanian, Director of Assessment
Revision date: July 2020
Direct and Indirect Assessment
As with assessment in general, Strategic Plan Assessment is also guided by the two basic principles: (1) Assessment should be useful, and (2) Assessment should be sustainable.
In order to ensure that assessment is useful, we use a combination of direct and indirect assessment. Direct assessment involves tangibles and is frequently quantitative in nature. Examples include number and dollar amounts of NSF grants, percentage of students from outside the Northeast United States, and the number of classes co-taught by faculty from more than one division. Examples of Indirect Assessment include data from surveys such as NSSE, HEDS, CORE, and NCHA. To ensure that useful assessment is sustainable, Strategic Plan assessment is carried out in a four-year cycle. A subset of goals is assessed each year.
A comprehensive assessment plan for the new Strategic Plan is currently under development.