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Michigan State University
Michigan State University

Office of Accreditation, Assessment, Curriculum, and Compliance
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Undergraduate Academic Program Review

Undergraduate Academic Program Review (UGAPR)

UGAPR Goals

  • Review all academic programs on a 7-year cycle
  • Provide a guided Continuous Improvement Plan process to the academic units to encourage consistency in coding and interpretation of data
  • Achieve three purposes:
    • Meet the needs of our HLC accreditation process (see Criteria 4 and 5 below)
    • 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 (alignment) 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
  • Align with the cocurricular assessment process
Once each seven years—according to the timeline—academic programs will receive an online survey document that requests submission of the following information:
  • Section One: Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs), PLO measurements, and/or Curricular Map
  • Section Two: Program Assessment Plan
  • Section Three: DEI: Closing Opportunity Gaps
  • Section Four: Please choose one of the following options.
    •  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.
  • Section Five: Six-Year Continuous Improvement Plan
  • Section Six: Compliance Checklist Final Notes What else do you want us to know? What recognition have you received for your assessment work? Accolades? Awards? Compensation? Credit?

 

Undergraduate Academic Program Review Feedback Process

 

Flow chart of process

 

Undergraduate Academic Program Review Rubric and Continuous Improvement Plan

Download Rubric

Download CIP Plan

Assessment

Timeline and Goals

Recommendations for the Undergraduate Academic Review Self-Study Committee (SSC)

APR is intended 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. 

  1. Programs/Units will appoint a Self-Study Committee Chair of APR for each program (programs may share the same chair or committees within departments).
  2. The Chair will collaborate with the program stakeholders to form a Self-Study Committee (suggested makeup below).
  3. 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.
  1. 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).
  2. Rubric for self-study form (by APRA and OUE) will be shared with programs as feedback.   
 Revise CIP and highlight progress; meet with APRA and OUE/Cocurricular.  

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

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

UGAPR Revisions of 2019 APR Pilot Process

The 2019 APR Pilot was abandoned during the Covid pandemic; because it was mostly narrative based, could be written by one faculty member without being shared, utilized an unwieldy data process for IR, and did not require feedback or continuous improvement, we are highlighting these recommended changes.

  1. Use of a form to simplify process
  2. Self-study will ask for direct response to IR data
  3. Data will be reviewed and returned
  4. Self-study committees will be inclusive of program faculty, staff, students
  5. APR will lead to a CIP; process will be ongoing throughout the 7 years

Suggested Voluntary Roles for Program

  1. SSC Chair (or Co-Chairs)
  2. Tenure-stream faculty (1-3, depending on size of program)
  3. Faculty* (1-3 from the list below, depending on size of program)
  4. Academic advising/teaching/curriculum development-focused faculty*
  5. Research-focused faculty Service/Outreach-focused faculty
  6. Program staff* (1-3 depending on size of program)
  7. Advisors
  8. Executive Assistants
  9. Lab Technicians Etc.
  10. 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.