Change is in the air. Three years ago California State University, Sacramento
(CSUS) and Ralph Wolff, Executive Director of the Western Association of Schools and
Colleges (WASC), entered into an agreement with CSUS to pilot a new approach to
reaccreditation. Instead of preparing a Self-Study organized around the traditional nine
standards, CSUS decided to undertake a Self-Study that documented institutional
effectiveness through assessment, particularly student outcomes. Instead of the
traditional week-long 20-person team visit to the campus, there would be two campus visits
with a much smaller team. Further, in a May 1996 planning meeting, WASC and CSUS
agreed that every aspect of the visits was negotiable.
CSUS accepted the challenge. By the time of the WASC visit, far-reaching changes
had accumulated and the Self-Study document took shape. The report, Self-Study (Phase
I), described efforts to document the character and effectiveness of the institution with data
in three areas selected for study by the campus WASC Steering Committee: Teaching and
Learning, Student Outcomes, and The Learning Community. The document also contained
a chapter briefly describing how CSUS has built upon the WASC Self-Study process to
institutionalize a culture of evidence. Congruent with agreements reached at the May
planning meeting, the report was uncommonly short--about 100 pages (supplemented by
an extensive appendix).
Dr. Virginia Smith, leading a seven-person team, visited CSUS December 4-6,1996.
The WASC response was not long in coming. On December 14, she wrote to President Gerth:
Self- Study's focus on assessment, that it recommends the Self-Study be
augmented to include further description of these other activities. Some of these
were mentioned in Chapter 6 of the Self-Study but they were much more fully
described, particularly in terms of emerging results, in the various meetings the
team held on campus. In those discussions the team began to see a developing
conversation about assessment that could have a real impact on the overall way the
University does its work.
extent in Ch. 6, it became clear that the University has a great quantity of data. We
think there are other data that could be drawn from this store relating to the themes
of the Self-Study that would enrich the treatment of the three themes. And, of
course, information from the Focus Groups, which had not been completed at the
time of Phase One of the Report, could also be incorporated. Some of the Strategic
Plan themes discussed in Council for University Planning (CUP) meetings also
overlap with the Self-Study themes, but use additional data.
The team was concerned at many points about how this emerging and still fragile
attention to assessment would continue after the involvement with WASC is no
longer a motivating factor. Is there an infrastructure that will provide the focus on
assessment after the Steering Committee ceases to exist? We realize that changes of
the sort we are talking about don't occur in one unit or office. To become
institutionalized it has to be a systemic change. What the team lacked is an
understanding of how the parts of the system are linked and what is considered the
responsibility in each part and the connections among the various parts that will
facilitate the continuation of this strengthened emphasis on assessment. Some of
this was clarified in the discussions on campus but it would help to have it as a part
of the report. To make it a part of the Self-Study would signal that the University
sees the establishment of a recognized infrastructure as an important element in
continuing and building a culture of evidence. Without some deliberate and
conscious steps to provide an adequate infrastructure most institutions trying to
change find themselves relaxing to their "default" mode of operation. We know that
some of this infrastructure is being forged now and would like that described. We
know that other steps, including ways to provide a broader base of knowledge
about assessment in the faculty and staff, are under consideration and may already
have started. We would like to hear about them also.
In the opinion of the WASC visiting team, the CSUS Self-Study document (Phase
I) represented only a small fraction of the assessment activities, and evidences of change,
that they noted in conversations or witnessed first hand during the first campus visit. Their
request to us was to more fully document for them, and for the Senior Accrediting
Commission, the multitude of changes that have occurred on the campus as a consequence
of the University's decision to undertake this experimental Self-Study almost four years
ago.
The visiting team asked for all available data that illuminates our understanding of
the three WASC Self-Study themes of Teaching and Learning, Student Outcomes, and The
Learning Community. We present these in Chapters 3, 4, and 5. Although corresponding
to the original Chapters 3, 4, and 5, their contents and organization differ from those of
Phase I in several ways:
Each of the three new chapters is organized around specific desirable outcomes.
These outcomes are survey-derived perceptual measures of learning and
environment, complemented by objective measures such as test scoring.
The data in each chapter are limited to students. Staff and faculty perceptions were
presented in Chapter 5 of Phase I.
The framework presented in each chapter creates the basis for an ongoing
institutional tracking of student outcomes.
Additional data have been added to those collected under WASC auspices.
Chapter 2 outlines Chapters 3, 4, and 5 and explains the methodological
framework.
the "sustaining infrastructure" (Smith Letter #3) in Chapters 6 and 7. Because the two
topics are interrelated in so many ways, they serve mainly as touchpoints in the wide-
ranging discussions in Chapters 6 and 7, and should not be considered defining categories
at this time.
Chapter 6 builds on Chapter 6 of Phase I by more fully describing the consultative
and governance infrastructure that we have created to link assessment, planning, and
budget allocations. Chapter 6 also partially addresses the team's request for a more
complete description of the "ripple effect". A significant number of changes in practices,
programs, and activities that have occurred as institutional responses to "evidence" are
described.
In Chapter 7, we contribute further to the team's understanding of the "ripple
effects" on campus by providing detailed descriptions of the Assessment Plans for selected
Academic programs. During their campus visit, team members met with representatives of
these departments to discuss the plans briefly summarized in this chapter. In this chapter,
we include a summary of a non-academic program review, and we describe at length
another consequence of our WASC endeavor, efforts underway by faculty to rethink how
faculty are evaluated.
The presentations of Chapters 6 and 7 taken together are integral to how CSUS
plans to sustain its commitment to using evidence in making decisions in the future. While
Chapter 6 describes the formal governance processes that will sustain the change, Chapter
7 describes the creation of expertise and expectations among our faculty, staff, and students
critical to any longer-term change. We conclude Chapter 7 by describing other efforts
designed to institutionalize change over time.