Overview and call to action for Student Affairs Assessment Council

1. Initiative 6: The Division of Student Affairs will build & sustain a robust culture of inquiry & planning. Overview and call to action for Student Affairs Assessment Council

2. The Division of Student Affairs will build and sustain a robust culture of data-based decision-making and planning. A responsible and conscientious organization engages in continuous improvement; it demonstrates the ability to execute its mission on a daily basis, while also planning for a more successful long-range future. Successful planning and daily effectiveness requires targeted assessment, focused research, rigorous evaluation, continuous learning, feedback mechanisms, strategic thinking, and data driven decision making. The Division of Student Affairs is committed to not only performing well today, but also ensuring a promising and sustainable future. Such a commitment demands that we build the necessary organizational character to demonstrate we are willing to establish outcomes to which we are committed, hold ourselves accountable, measure and evaluate our efforts, and use resulting data to inform our future commitments and efforts.

3. The Division of Student Affairs will build and sustain a robust culture of inquiry and planning. • Charge: A responsible and conscientious organization engages in continuous improvement; it demonstrates the ability to execute its mission on a daily basis, while also planning for a more successful long-range future. Successful planning and daily effectiveness require a culture of inquiry that incorporates targeted data collection and interpretation, information sharing, continuous learning, and innovation. The Division of Student Affairs is committed not only to performing well today, but also ensuring a promising and sustainable future that contributes to student success. Such a commitment demands that we build the necessary organizational character to demonstrate the process of inquiry and innovation that results in asking meaningful questions, successful planning, responsible decision making, problem solving, accountability, and daily effectiveness.

4. Group involvement thus far • Jo Alexander: Disability Access Services • Maureen Cochran: StuAff Research, Eval & Planning • Tina Clawson: Recreational Sports • James Day: Enrollment Management • Chrysanthemum Mattison: MPP student (at the time) • Robert Reff: Student Health Services • Lucas Schalewski: CSSA student • Jennica Vincent: MPP student

7. Major milestones for Initiative 6 • Researched trends & discussed in context • Created model Envisioning a Culture of Inquiry • Identified 8 recommendations for action • Accepted to present at NASPA Assessment & Persistence conference in June, 2013.

9. Recommendations for ACTION

10. Story Gathering The Council for the Advancement of Standards recommends: • Institutions should use evidence to inform decisions. • Data used to inform decisions should be shared with students and other constituencies in “transparent and accessible ways,” and “changes resulting from the use of assessments and evaluation must be shared with stakeholders.” We propose that we establish a means through which the Office of SA-REP can understand what great examples of data-driven decision there are within the Division. This information will be utilized & disseminated in various ways (see: Marketing, Celebration, Survey Environment, and Communication proposals). • Will serve as a baseline for understanding what data-driven decision making currently exists in the Division. • Identify exemplary demonstrations of operating within a Culture of Inquiry. • We suggest creating a process through which units can notify both the data owner and the Office of SAREP of data-driven decision making.

11. Marketing To foster a culture of inquiry within the Division, we recommend designing and implementing a marketing campaign around Envisioning a Culture of Inquiry. In order to mobilize the Division in this direction, we need to establish awareness and buy-in. Students are likely to engage in survey research when (Tschepikow, 2012) • the costs of their participation are outweighed by potential benefits and • the student trusts the individual or entity from which the survey originates; trust is fostered through demonstration that the data that they provide will result in perceived. Currently, there isn’t a systematic way of notifying students that changes are made based on data that they have provided. We propose fostering student engagement in the Culture of Inquiry by sharing with them the decisions that are made based on their feedback. This will likely create a positive impact on the Survey Environment proposal as well.

12. Engage & Educate An important part of building and sustaining a culture of inquiry is encouraging and supporting growth in competence. We propose that we think of new ways to engage the division in building competence around assessment (potentially other areas as well?): • Regular training offerings • Assessment curriculum in the new student engagement software • Make more online tutorials available

13. Survey Environment Students are likely to engage in survey research when (Tschepikow, 2012) • the costs of their participation are outweighed by potential benefits and • the student trusts the individual or entity from which the survey originates; trust is fostered through demonstration that the data that they provide will result in perceived. Note: Author recommends established institution-wide policies for conducting surveys on campus. Put into context at Oregon State University: • Plummeting responses on NSSE and other large (and costly) survey efforts, even as participant recruitment and outreach efforts have been ramped up. With response rates this low, the data isn’t typically generalizable to the population. Rebecca Sanderson recommended halting further administration of large scale surveys such as this until we improve upon the survey environment. • Movement towards University-wide efforts to get a handle on over-surveying seems to be stagnant. In addition, the scope of this initiative lies within the Student Affairs Division. We propose that Student Affairs take charge in terms of creating and sustaining a collaborative and survey environment. In line with this proposal, we suggest pursuit of the following: • Respondents should receive feedback as to how the information will be acted upon (relates to Marketing proposal). • Create standards and processes to follow with gatekeepers where necessary. • Encourage exploration of data that already exists prior to collection. • Collaboration between departments in terms of teaming up on surveys efforts. • Potential for staggered sampling.

14. Celebration We propose establishing mechanisms for recognition and celebration of individuals or units who operate within a culture of inquiry. An idea that we have discussed has been holding an annual or e/o year 1-day conference similar to the Academic Division’s Faculty Assessment Academy.

15. Standards There are several sets of professional standards that guide the assessment work in the Division: • Council for Advancement of Standards in Higher Ed. (CAS) • Educational Advisory Board (EAB) • Assessment, Evaluation & Research We recommend conducting the EAB Diagnostic found in The Data Driven Student Affairs Enterprise in order to better understand where we measure up against these standards. Perhaps we could set up a 3-5 year cycle of revisiting the diagnostic and other standards in order to better understand our successes and areas for improvement.

16. Human Resources Initiative 6 has identified needs in terms of the amount of FTE that is devoted to assessment practices in the Division. Additional staffing is needed for practices and services that includes: survey management and coordination, technology use, and comprehensive data analysis support.   Additional staffing is required to successfully meet the demands and services of the Student Affairs: Research, Evaluation, and Planning office needs to foster a Culture of Inquiry • Research Analyst position (1.00 FTE) • Graduate Assistantship (.50 FTE) Student Affairs Assessment Council representatives are expected to contribute significant amounts of time to departmental assessment work and for many, this important work is not reflected in their position description. This can make it easier for assessment activities to appear to be a low priority and in many cases, assessment council representatives feel pressed for time to effectively carry out assessment practices. We recommend that professionals who engage in the bulk of their departmental assessment work and/or serve on the Student Affairs Assessment Council should have “Assessment, Research, and Planning” included in their job descriptions.  

17. Communication Research that shows that there are vast benefits to developing and maintaining connections between Academic and Student Affairs Divisions. We recommend continued and deliberate communication with the Academic Division, working towards data sharing and a University-wide assessment perspective.

19. Culture of Inquiry Will you join us on this journey?

20. Considerations • Next steps • Identify priorities and realistic timeline • Establish plan to propel process forward • What have we missed? • Larry’s time as VP for Student Affairs

21. Questions & Discussion What are your reactions?