Undergraduate Academic Program Review

Review all undergraduate programs on a 7-year cycle
Provide a guided Continuous Improvement Plan process to the academic units to encourage consistency in interpretation and creating meaningful positive change of data
Achieve three purposes:
- Meet the needs of our HLC accreditation process (with new criteria)
- Meet the needs of our departments/units/colleges/programs and their external accreditors
- Use the academic program review process as a way to further curriculum enhancement and Continuous Improvement Processes (CIP) by providing data for program planning and resource allocation
Create an appropriate timeline that matches that of external accreditors and review

Every seven years—academic program faculty, staff, and administrators will review their academic program offering based on the completion of the UGAPR Form that includes the following steps:

Step One: Committee Structure
Step Two: Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs)
Step Three: Assessment Tools and Policies
Step Four: Curriculum Map
Step Five: Access, Opportunity, and Excellence
Step Six: Continuous Improvement Questions/Plan and Program Narrative
- Programs may select from the following to complete their Program Narrative:
  - Tell the story of your program successes. Please choose 1-2 main areas to highlight; programs might focus a narrative on improvement in student achievement, faculty achievement, or successful curricular changes.
  - Submit the APR report you last shared with your external accreditor.

The UGAPR Form (Steps 1-6) is available within the UGAPR Microsoft Team. To request access, contact Kari Stone-Sewalish at: stoneka3@msu.edu

Undergraduate Academic Program Review Feedback Process

A graphic depicting the undergraduate academic program review process.

Download Process (DOC)

Undergraduate Academic Program Review Rubric and Continuous Improvement Plan

Download Rubric

Download CIP Plan

Timeline and Goals

Recommendations for the Undergraduate Academic Program Review Committee

UGAPR strives to be a fully inclusive process. We encourage programs committees to assess their student successes and challenges both curricular and co-curricular. Programs are also encouraged to promote their faculty and academic staff research successes and challenges, along with assessing any program culture-building efforts.

Programs/Units will appoint a Self-Study Committee Chair of APR for each program (programs may share the same chair or committees within departments).
The Chair will collaborate with the program stakeholders to form a Self-Study Committee (suggested makeup below).
Each program will complete the internal self-study, using dashboard data from IR and other available sources. Department chair and dean will respond to the self-study.

The self-study will be submitted to APRA and OUE, approved by the study chair, department chair and dean, by the beginning of fall semester. Data will be reviews and coded for accreditation and continuous improvement purposes (Rubric draft for CIP).
Rubric for self-study form (by APRA and OUE) will be shared with programs as feedback.

Update CIP based on response from APRA and OUE/Cocurricular.

Revise CIP and highlight progress; meet with APRA and OUE/Cocurricular.

Schedule reminder of upcoming APR Gather committee for work in Year One.

Suggested Voluntary Roles for Program

Program Chair (or Co-Chairs)
Tenure-stream faculty (1-3, depending on size of program)
Faculty* (1-3 from the list below, depending on size of program)
Academic advising/teaching/curriculum development-focused faculty*
Research-focused faculty Service/Outreach-focused faculty
Program staff* (1-3 depending on size of program)
Advisors
Executive Assistants
Lab Technicians Etc.
Minimum of two students (6-13 members total)

*Faculty and staff representatives should be recognized for their service to the program through annual review processes and/or other reasonable compensation, such as release time from other service commitments in Years 1 and 4 or a professional development stipend, as determined by the college.