Our mission as the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Strategic Planning (IESP) is to gather and interpret timely and relevant information to advance the mission of the university through the continuous improvement of quality institutional practices and student success across all programs.
The goals of the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Strategic Planning include:
To request additional data or for information about the IESP Office, please contact us at assessment@asbury.edu.
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In the tradition of a liberal arts education, Asbury University requires students to pursue their fields of study within the larger framework of interdisciplinary study. This interdisciplinary liberal arts curriculum, Foundations, offers a course of study through which students can engage enduring questions about the human condition. It is an education for transformation.
This central educational experience gives shape to the mission of Asbury University by enabling students to relate to the professions, society, the family, and the Church. To view a complete list of Foundations requirements, please visit the Office of the Registrar.
Foundations assessment at Asbury University intentionally includes multiple types of measures for contextual understanding and the elimination of “bias” (external and internal), in addition to the type of student response mode (direct and indirect) to establish a balanced assessment system. The multiple measures align with University’s Performance Assessment System, which includes measures reflecting Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes, Values and Belief goals and the Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) associated with these overarching goals. The direct measures provide objective data that directly address the knowledge and skill sets within the Student Learning Outcomes. By comparison, the indirect measures offer responses more representative of the affective or value domains embedded within each of the SLOs. Within student liberal education, the cognitive and the affective domains are inextricably bound; and Asbury’s system for assessing Foundations holistically and analytically demonstrates this interrelated conceptual framework of the SLOs. Typically, there are three categories or types of data used in the system including: 1) student achievement data; 2) student survey data; and 3) student GPA data. Portions of the same data sets may be used to respond to different SLOs building a strong interconnected system of analysis using targeted measures.
View the Foundations assessment system in detail.
The General Education Proficiency Assessment (GEPA) is a multiple-choice examination designed by Asbury University faculty members, across all disciplines, to assess students’ conceptual thinking and learning as an outcome of their experiences through Foundations. This tool was designed, piloted and administered during Spring 2011 as an internal direct measure of Asbury’s Foundations program.
ETS Proficiency Profile
The ETS Proficiency Profile (EPP) is administered annually to all freshmen and seniors. As a nationally standardized test of reading, writing, math, and critical thinking, the EPP provides evidence of academic growth and comparisons to other institutions.
Foundations operates under the auspices of the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, Dr. Steve Clements. Dr. Clements, with Dr. Dan Strait, Associate Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, and the General Education Committee, manages the continuous progress of the program through the process of assessment and analysis.
Asbury University’s interdisciplinary liberal arts curriculum, Foundations, organizes around five (5) key conceptual areas outlined in the framework below. Each of the five areas within the framework clearly identifies a Student Learning Outcome (SLO) crucial to the liberal arts vision and overall academic mission of the University. While each conceptual category is distinct, and supports a clearly defined learning outcome, none of the categories is to be considered as isolated from the other, nor static. They are of a piece, all interconnected, inseparable, and dynamic. They invite reflection on the whole person, not on some disaggregated set of aptitudes or skills. Thus Christian faith and culture sheds light on and informs human thought and creative expression. Yet neither the religious nor the creative life unfolds in a vacuum, nor is entirely private. A person in search of knowledge, meaning, and wisdom must necessarily engage society and answer the call to public and global responsibility, while also recognizing that informed citizenship requires critical thinking, analysis, and problem-solving. Social responsibility, in turn, entails a deep awareness that human persons are very obviously situated in human circumstances and communities, which must be sustained by productive learning, living, and well-being. Thus, the following conceptual framework for Foundations at Asbury University is designed to highlight these intersections, to open new pathways of thought, to promote an interdisciplinary approach to liberal arts study, and, ultimately, to keep alive the enduring questions of human life and meaning.
At Asbury University, the Foundations program takes shape within the context of Christian revelation. Asbury’s Christian (Wesleyan) theological tradition invites students to apprehend God’s revelation through scripture, reason, tradition, and experience. These common inquiries challenge students to explore the rich relationship between Christian belief and practice, between Christian theological foundations and traditions. As a crucial part of this theological education, students will use critical approaches and interpretive skills necessary to establish life-long Biblical literacy.
SLO 1: Students will demonstrate Biblical literacy and theological understanding as they inform human life.
Works of literature, art, music, and philosophy raise enduring questions about humankind. This area of study will help students ask and address fundamental questions relating to humankind and the varieties of human experiences. Essential to this area of inquiry is a sustained program of reading deeply in and writing about influential thinkers—artists, poets, philosophers, and historians—who have posed questions and expressed ideas about such perennial human concerns as art and beauty, truth and goodness, history and culture, and morality and ethics.
SLO 2: Students will use aesthetic, historic, linguistic, and philosophical forms and expressions to interpret the human condition.
For millennia humans have organized themselves in families, communities and states – for protection, to meet needs, expand material wealth and promote social well being. This category attempts to understand the human experience with regard to social and political organization and the responsibility of individuals and groups to sustain and alter the social order.
SLO 3: Students will demonstrate how key concepts from the social and behavioral sciences help to identify and address real-world problems of human persons, communities, and nations, including the origin of such problems.
The modern age presents humans not just with mass society, but also with an outpouring of data about every element of that society, as well as tools that enable individuals and groups to analyze and interpret these data. Increasingly, success in the professions and in personal life will depend upon a person’s ability to utilize these tools to facilitate critical thinking and problem solving. This area of inquiry will challenge students to comprehend and evaluate mathematical and statistical information, perform problem-solving operations on qualitative and quantitative data, and describe the challenges of using technology and managing information.
SLO 4: The student will demonstrate critical thinking and problem solving through the interpretation and analysis of data.
Scientific discoveries in the recent era have led to an explosion of knowledge of the natural world. Though such knowledge has enabled humans to conquer diseases and to construct infrastructures that promote human well-being, the scientific era has also raised moral, ethical, religious, and environmental questions regarding human practices, habitations, circumstances, and environments. Scientific discovery and practicing the scientific method are crucial for a life of productive learning and living. Students, then, will explore foundational principles and concepts in the natural sciences and use them in critically thinking about such related areas as personal wellness, environmental stewardship, culture formation, and moral and ethical decision making.
SLO 5: Students will use the scientific method to engage in an exploration of the natural world, including a close examination of practices that promote environmental stewardship and personal well-being.
Learn More about the Imagine 2022 Strategic Plan
Asbury University is committed to Christian integrity and accountability. To ensure we provide programs of the highest quality, our Integrated Performance Assessment System (IPAS) encompasses all facets of institutional policy and practice. Guiding our assessment process, the Strategic Plan 2012-2017 establishes the standards by which Asbury University evaluates and determines institutional effectiveness. The intentional design of IPAS anchors our “Five Big Questions” to the institution’s five strategic initiatives.
These questions both give meaning to the strategic vision as well as guide the development of IPAS:
Assessment, within the broader institutional effectiveness process, allows us to answer our primary question, “How well do we fulfill our mission?”
In order to fully support our vision of academic excellence and spiritual vitality and strategic goals, we assess both student learning and institutional capacity.
The purpose of Asbury University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) is to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of human subjects of research conducted by faculty, staff, and students through project review. The IRB promotes ethically responsible human subject research by fostering compliance with local, state, and federal laws as well as with the ethical standards and policies of Asbury University.
The assessment system of student performance incorporates three categories of data including student survey data, student participation data and student achievement data. The multiple measures provide contextual understanding and eliminate bias (external and internal), in a variety of student response modes (direct and indirect). Portions of the same data sets may be used to respond to different student learning outcomes, building a strong interrelated system of analysis using targeted measures.
Provides comparison with national populations
Institutionally designed and meaningful to that context
Objective measures of students’ learning based upon standardization or evaluation criteria
Measures about student learning by looking at indicators of learning other than student work output
With this multiple-tier design, the assessment system comprises a balanced approach with three levels of measures to provide information for evaluating and improving student performance.
The focus of our institutional assessment process begins at the departmental level, extends downward to program levels, and moves upward to administrative tactical areas. At all levels, the assessment process is aligned to the Strategic Goals and Targets by which the institution measures its effectiveness. Academic departments design objectives that address three specific charges of student learning (Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes), while Support Services departments design objectives to address charges related to institutional capacity and effectiveness (Customer Service and Efficiency, as well as Student Learning and Community Impact where applicable).
Common data sets help ensure uniformity across campus. Data is collected online and centrally housed in our WEAVEonline database. All data collection is intentionally designed to build a culture of evidence that informs institutional practice, policy, and effectiveness.
Academic excellence and spiritual vitality are the foundations upon which Asbury University has been built and continue to grow; they are embedded in our very mission statement and guide every goal and decision that is made at Asbury.
The Cornerstone Project was a natural outgrowth of our commitment to spiritual vitality. Because our Christian faith plays such an essential role in our identity as a liberal arts institution, we take our responsibility to assess student spiritual outcomes seriously. We are exceedingly aware of the extraordinary challenges, and indeed hubris, in attempting to assess such ethereal matters as spirituality; surely only God the Father, Son, and Spirit truly understand the heart and motives of a believer.
However, it is our responsibility as educators and followers of Christ to humbly attempt to assess the spiritual vitality of our students by the best available means possible. We fully realize that in so doing, it is only possible to capture a partial and incomplete understanding at best. Yet, we are, for many reasons, compelled to continue trying to assess the spiritual formation of our students.
Therefore, the Asbury University Cornerstone Project and its four Cornerstones of Holiness, Scripture, Stewardship, and Mission are assessed by a variety of means, both quantitative and qualitative including the following streamlined assessment configuration:
The following table identifies Cornerstone Project student learning outcomes and links those outcomes to the Strategic Plan. Assessment measures include the Alumni Survey, Cross-Cultural Assessment, focus groups, GEPA, MyVoice, Pre/Post Exams, SMIP, STI, and waste audits.
4.3 Influence in the Global Community
4.4 Cultural Engagement
4.3. Influence in the Global Community
3.1 Leadership Development
3.2 Leadership Experience
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