Assessment
The Outcomes Assessment Committee meets to discuss, design, and reflect on the learning assessment process at the Graduate Center. Since November 2010, the Committee has approved the Graduate Center’s institutional-level learning goals and asked programs to write/revise program learning goals as well as learning goals for the First and Second Exam, dissertation/capstone, professional development and ethics. The goal of this exercise was to develop learning goals for the institution and its programs that were appropriately integrated with one another.
Members of the Graduate Center community can access current versions of assessment materials, as well as other useful assessment links and resources here. An error message will display on the login page until an active GC username and password are entered.
Currently, the Outcomes Assessment Committee is in the process of instituting a 3-year assessment cycle appropriate for a heavily program-driven doctoral institution. In fall 2011, a pilot assessment review took place with a subset of doctoral programs, and, in spring 2012, the remaining doctoral programs began their first annual assessment review. The pilot assessment review allowed us to develop a template for annual assessment at the Graduate Center based on detailed feedback from the participating programs.
Each year of the 3-year assessment cycle, a program focuses on one or two assessment components (the First Exam, the Second Exam, the dissertation/capstone, professional development activities or ethics) and, using the template developed during the pilot, conducts a comprehensive review of that component, performance on it and the curriculum/preparation leading up to it. The results of these reviews are annual reports to the Provost on the effectiveness of the assessment component(s) in question. Those reports allow the Provost to evaluate student learning assessment on an institutional level in accordance with the institution-level learning and strategic goals.
The Members of the Outcomes Assessment Committee
Professor David Olan, (chair) Executive Officer, Ph.D./D.M.A. Program in Music
Professor Ted Brown, Executive Officer, Ph.D. Program in Computer Science
Marie Burrage, Associate Director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness
Professor Laurel Eckhardt, Executive Officer, Ph.D. Program in Biology
Professor John Greenwood, Ph.D. Program in Philosophy
Associate Provost and Dean for Sciences Ann S. Henderson
Kim Hartswick, Academic Director, CUNY Baccalaureate
Associate Provost and Dean for Humanities and Social Sciences Louise Lennihan
Professor Maureen O'Connor, Executive Officer, Ph.D. Program in Biology
Professor Joe Rollins, Executive Officer, Ph.D. Program in Political Science
Professor Barbara Weinstein, Executive Officer, Ph.D. Program in Audiology
Kara Eubanks, Student Assessment Coordinator and D.M.A. student
Tony Perri, Ph.D student in Chemistry
Jared Simrad, Ph.D. student in Classics
Please email any questions regarding assessment to Kara Eubanks at keubanks@gc.cuny.edu.