Each College and School will complete the full Academic Planning & Continuous Quality Improvement Process over a six-year cycle (or an adapted cycle as required by a school-level external accrediting body). The six-year cycle will occur along the following annual timeline:
During Year 1 of the cycle, all programs within a college or school will complete a self-study (Appendix A). The purpose is to do a summative evaluation of each program, using data from institutional alignment (strategic and OHC), program assessment, including LEP as appropriate, stakeholder feedback, and market demand and employer expectations. The purpose of the Comprehensive Review is to create a rich, consistent, and comprehensive information set that will inform the development of the College or School’s strategic, academic, and assessment plans and program-level plans and strategies. The Comprehensive Review will include an external evaluation at the program or college/school level as determined by the Dean.
During Year 2, colleges and schools and their programs will develop new (or revise existing) strategic and academic plans, including detailed action plans for all programs. The plan will include an updated assessment plan that incorporates feedback from meta-assessment in Year 1, as well as alignment with the OHC and LEP assessment schedules.
At the end of Year 3, colleges and schools and their programs will provide a progress report on the implementation of their strategic plan, academic plan, and assessment plan.
During Year 4, colleges and schools and their programs will complete a Mid-cycle Review that will focus on a review of updated stakeholder and market data, assessment progress reports and strategic and academic plan implementation. The outcome of the Mid-cycle Review will be an update/revision to the college/schools strategic and academic plan as necessary.
At the end of Year 5, colleges and schools and their programs will provide a progress report on the implementation of their strategic plan, academic plan, and assessment plan.
At the end of Year 6, colleges and schools and their programs will provide a progress report on the implementation of their strategic plan, academic plan, and assessment plan.
Approximately every 6 years, all programs in each College and School will complete a Comprehensive Review. The Comprehensive Review creates an opportunity to conduct a summative evaluation of the programs and services provided in each College or School and to create a rich, consistent, and comprehensive information set that will inform the development of the College or School’s strategic, academic, and assessment plans.
During Year 4 of the Academic Planning & Improvement Process, each College and School will conduct a Mid-cycle Review. During this time, programs will receive updated stakeholder and performance data and submit any updates to their self-studies. Based on the updated program information, the Dean will provide an updated Program Portfolio Matrix and strategic and academic plan.
The Comprehensive Review and Mid-Cycle Review processes can be found in Appendix A.
All academic programs, co-curricular activities and St. Cloud State University’s Our Husky Compact (institutional learning outcomes) will have an active and complete assessment plan on file with the Office of Assessment & Accreditation that meet criteria and core components defined by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC).
SCSU’s official Assessment Policy establishes the expectations, structure and principles that will:
A complete assessment plan contains the following components:
Annually, programs and units will submit an assessment report that will include assessment activity for the year, analysis of the data and information collected through the assessment process and actions and changes that occur as a result of assessment data. Annual assessment reporting will be made via SCSU’s official assessment management system (see SCSU’s Assessment Policy for additional detail).
As part of Comprehensive Review, all programs in the college or school will undergo meta-assessment, which involves a peer team of SCSU faculty and staff that will review the current assessment plans and provide feedback for improvement. Those programs that receive an “Established” finding through meta-assessment will be allowed to submit an assessment report every two years.
All academic programs are expected to demonstrate alignment between curricular content taught in the program and the dimensions of Our Husky Compact and to actively engage in assessment of student learning in the OHC Dimensions. Programs will have on file the OHC Dimension Alignment Matrix that identifies the courses in their program that provide the clearest evidence of student learning for the outcomes of each OHC dimension at the Introductory and Mastery levels (up to 2 courses total for each outcome). Programs will participate in the data collection cycles for each OHC Dimension of the Year by providing student artifacts for use in the OHC assessment process. Programs will also report any additional assessment of the OHC dimensions as part of their annual assessment reports (see Our Husky Compact Assessment Plan for additional detail).
Alignment with Our Husky Compact Dimension of the Year
Those programs with courses offered through SCSU’s Liberal Education Program (LEP) are required to participate in assessment of the LEP Goal Areas based on the established assessment cycle and in alignment with the OHC assessment cycle. Courses that are not assessed as part of the assessment cycle will be removed from the LEP schedule (see Liberal Education Program: Assessment Plan for additional detail).
Other reports will be available soon through SharePoint.
Questions or issues with accessing the reports? Please contact Holly Evers, hpevers@stcloudstate.edu.
Comprehensive Review and strategic and academic planning for colleges and schools and their programs should be informed by high-quality data collected from stakeholders. To support this effort and provide consistent data, SCSU will provide original data collection for use in the Comprehensive Review and Mid-cycle Review processes and provide standard dashboards and metrics through the PowerBI environment that are updated at least annually.
SCSU’s Office of Analytics and Institutional Research (AIR) will develop, collect and distribute survey data from the following stakeholders:
At least annually, AIR and the Office of Assessment and Accreditation will collect and disseminate:
As a result of the Comprehensive Review, each college/school will develop a strategic and academic plan that supports the achievement of SCSU’s Strategic Plan and the goals of the Academic Planning & Improvement Process.
Each college/school strategic and academic plan should include:
The GSS is an anonymous, bi-annual survey sent to graduating seniors in late Fall and late Spring. It asks about Our Husky Compact, departments and programs, and plans after graduation. The Analytics and Institutional Research (AIR) Office compiles data sets for programs. NOTE: There must be enough respondents to maintain anonymity. Otherwise, the information will not be shared. It is the responsibility of departments and programs to encourage participation.
SCSU participates in the NSSE bi-annually, in the spring of odd years (eg.- 2021, 2023, 2025, etc.) NSSE is an annual survey representing two critical features of collegiate quality. The first is the amount of time and effort students put into their studies and other educationally purposeful activities. The second is how the institution deploys its resources and organizes the curriculum and other learning opportunities to get students to participate in activities that decades of research studies show are linked to student learning. Additional information can be found on the NSSE website.
Based on the results of Comprehensive Review of each program, the Dean will update the college/school Program Portfolio Management (PPM) matrices and 3-year Program Development Plan using the following review and consultation process (Appendix B):
The resulting effort will result in the college/school academic plan that will be included as part of the unit’s strategic plan developed during Year 2.