Effective: November 22, 1995

PURPOSE

To emphasize the importance of planning and evaluation and to specify the process.

AUTHORITY/SOURCE

SACS Criteria 3.1.

POLICY

The University's quality depends not only on its educational processes and resources, but also on successful use of those processes and resources to achieve its goals.  The University must engage in continuous analysis and appraisal of its purposes, policies, procedures and programs.  The University has the obligation to all constituents to evaluate effectiveness and to use the results in a broad-based, continuous planning and evaluation process.

To focus attention on the effectiveness of its educational programs, the University must establish adequate procedures for planning and evaluation.  The University must define its expected educational results and describe how the achievement of these results will be ascertained.

Academic Affairs evaluates new program and degree proposals in the context of the University's overall mission.  It plans programs so that enrollments, facilities, and Board of Regents' approval are synchronized.  It supports and coordinates regular reviews of established programs and those programs that require reaccreditation.

Academic Affairs strives to maintain and improve quality through a process of planning and evaluation.  The guiding principle is that critical self-evaluation is essential to maintaining effectiveness in an environment of changing conditions.  This process addresses the Division's purposes and policies, assesses the external environment, internal strengths and weaknesses, financial vigor, and the institutional and societal values that impact on courses of action.

The "Academic Affairs Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation Annual Cycle" should produce a shared sense of direction that supports adjustments to changing conditions, goal-oriented decisions, information sharing, calendar coordination, and priorities for allocation of resources: fiscal, physical, and human.

PROCEDURE

Every administrative unit within Academic Affairs annually evaluates its past performance and plans its future directions following the "Academic Affairs Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation Annual Cycle".  The focus at each level is the administrative unit or program, its information and resource needs, the outcomes of the services it provides, and the impact on the needs and expectations of users of the program, the targeted group.

This process requires that unit planning and evaluation have the following characteristics:

1) broad-based involvement of the members of the unit;

2) a clearly stated mission;

3) goals and outcomes consistent with the mission of Academic Affairs;

4) dissemination of information for reporting and decision making;

5) procedures for evaluating the extent to which plans and desired outcomes are being achieved; and

6) the use of evaluation results to improve unit effectiveness.

Each unit's planning and evaluation report is consolidated into the next higher administrative unit's plan, next into the division's plan, then into the University's annual plan.

The timing of the phases is dependent upon the activities of the unit or program, and its relationship to the next higher administrative unit, the division, and the University annual cycle.  The Provost, in consultation with the Council of Deans, coordinates the planning cycle and annually distributes a schedule for these activities.

Back to Section 1

Page last updated: January 17, 2002 by Amy Perez
Page Content: Kenneth Johnson