NUTS & BOLTS

 An assessment newsletter serving Springfield College and Benedictine University

July 2007 · Vol. 7 No. 11

New dean to stress outcomes, planning

Michael Bromberg, new dean of academic affairs and campus administrator for Springfield College in Illinois and Benedictine University, wants to focus on getting to know the institution at first. But he believes his experience at Ohio Dominican University gives him a sense of how to grow a Catholic liberal arts college in a Midwestern state capital. He and his family are moving to Springfield, and he says he's in the game here for keeps.

"I've put my house on the market," he said. "Do you know anybody who wants to buy a house in Columbus?"

Bromberg was at Ohio Dominican from 1988 till he left to take the new position here July 1. He served as adult program director and vice-president of business affairs there, and in several administrative capacities at Thomas More College near Cincinnati during the 1980s. Along the way, he has taught political science, public administration and an introductory course for adult learners.

"I think I've gotten here with a set of experiences and a certain value system on the appropriate way to lead an institution," he said.

Bromberg said he wants to spend his time listening, especially at first, but already knows he expects to focus on academics. And he wants to develop a plan that will take SCI/Benedictine's strengths and build on them.

"I'm going to focus on those things which most directly impact the academic [mission]," he said. "I have a lot to learn. I've got to spend a lot of time reading, and listening, and asking questions. I hope through this process of questioning and working with faculty we will be able to build a plan of attack, goals and outcomes. To put it as simply as possible, it's planning to be better tomorrow than we were today. However we define that, it means how we serve students in the framework of our mission statement."

Part of that is Catholic identity. Like Springfield College and Benedictine's campuses in Springfield and Lisle, Ohio Dominican has grown in recent years by reorienting itself to the needs of a more diverse student body, while maintaining values compatible with the mission of Catholic education over the years.

"We're a liberal arts institution," he said. "We're a Catholic liberal arts institution, and that means there are certain things about our values and perspectives on the world, our role in the world and the types of citizens we hope to be molding. [We should ask ourselves:] What are we doing? What is it we can do better? And how do we do it better? That means understanding what our resources are and relating those resources to our mission. It gets down to the hard work of prioritizing."

Assessment is a big part of that picture. Bromberg said SCI is in a good position to build on the assessment program that the North Central Association OK'd in 2005, and to upgrade it substantially during the eight years remaining in the current accreditation cycle. Professional development is a key component of an ongoing assessment plan, he said, especially for new faculty.

Bromberg said SCI's focus on assessment for continuous improvement gives us a good start toward growing a model learning outcomes assessment program. He said the continuous improvement model, in which preliminary data on outcomes are plowed back into the planning process on an ongoing basis, is not only a good way of meeting government and accreditation mandates. It's a good way of doing business across the board.

"Your goal always gets back to one of continuous improvement," he said. "That's for each and every person in the organization. We all have our roles that we can all do better. There will never be a day we slap a framework together and say we're done."

In Ohio Dominican's adult accelerated degree program, Bromberg helped plan and direct an array of program, curriculum and faculty-student communication innovations that raised student retention from 69 percent to 80 percent. As the school's CFO during the 1990s, he managed a $35 million operating budget and worked with strategic planning. And for five years he worked with William Carroll, president of SCI and Benedictine, who at that time was Ohio Dominican's vice president for academic affairs.

"I have a good deal of trust and respect for Bill Carroll," he said. "I'm picking up my family and uprooting it, in part because I trust Bill Carroll."

Bromberg holds a B.A. in political science and a Master's in Public Administration from American University, and he has completed all requirements but the dissertation for a doctorate in higher education at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

CATs on holiday: Workshops in August

Tentative plans are for the chair of the assessment committee to conduct workshops on Classroom Assessment Techniques (known as CATs for short) as soon as they can be scheduled after the Resource Center goes onto its fall schedule in August. Like last year's workshops, they will be an opportunity for classroom instructors to discuss how they go about assessing student learning. While they haven't been scheduled yet, plans are to offer two or three workshops at different times so faculty can fit one into their schedules. Attendance is voluntary, and all interested SCI and Benedictine University faculty are welcome.

New instructors especially are urged to attend one of the workshops, but seasoned faculty members are welcome to exchange ideas and share their experience and insights as well. Last year we had a good mixture of new adjuncts and experienced classroom teachers, and the sessions were well received by the people who attended.

'Assessment for improvement?'

Got a No. 2 pencil ready? Here's a test question for you: What does the future hold for us at SCI and Benedictine?

  1. more standardized testing to comply with mandates of the federal government
  2. more standardized testing to comply with mandates of the state government
  3. more standardized testing to comply with mandates of regional accrediting agencies like North Central
  4. more standardized testing to comply with mandates proposed by public university advocacy groups
  5. all of above.
According to a recent article in the online newsletter Inside Higher Ed, the correct answer would be "4." The American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges unveiled a joint “Voluntary System of Accountability” that would involve massive standardized testing. While we wouldn't be directly affected by this proposal, at least initially, the big state universities over the years set much of the agenda for higher ed in general. So I still think it's just a matter of time before the answer is something more like "5."

Doug Lederman, who reports on federal government affairs for the newsletter, says the AASCU/NASULGC proposal would "require a major change in institutional practice to the extent that it would compel the colleges and universities that choose to participate to report their scores on measures of student engagement (which many use and report selected information about) and to begin using one of three standardized measures of student learning — the Collegiate Learning Assessment, the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency, and the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress — and reporting their scores on those tests."

At SCI, we now test our sophomores on two of the five modules of the CAAP, and we purchase data linkages from the test vendor that allow us to track "value added" in math and reading. So we're not far out of line with what's being proposed. One expert on psychometrics and assessment, Trudy Banta of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, told Lederman the planned test regimen could be helpful if it is used for continuous improvement purposes and if faculty help set planning goals:

... she remained wary that attempts to measure student learning for “accountability” reasons, using a limited number of standardized measures, could impede the sort of experimentation in which faculty members and academic administrators engage to best gauge what works and doesn’t in educating students.

But Banta, who has participated in the NASULGC and AASCU discussions about the voluntary system of accountability, said that she increasingly recognized that public institutions, particularly, are under pressure from policy makers to “demonstrate their accountability in more transparent ways than has been the case in the past,” and that she had come to believe that, done right, the public college groups’ approach could accomplish that without damaging institutions’ own efforts at internal “assessment for improvement.”

Only, though, “if faculty become engaged in that process,” Banta said. “It’s all about engaging the faculty in deciding on the instrument, making sure that the test covers some of the student learning outcomes they think are important, and then looking at scores to see what they say about whether students know those things or not, and using that information to improve teaching and student services.”

That sounds an awful lot, to me at least, like what we've already started doing at SCI.

-- Pete Ellertsen, chair, assessment committee

 

Nuts &  Bolts is an electronic newsletter published by SCI's Assessment Committee. Members are: Bob Blankenberger, Brian Carrigan, Dave Holland, Barb Tanzyus and Pete Ellertsen (chair). Kevin Broeckling, dean of students; and John Cicero, academic affairs dean, serve ex officio. If you have information, comments or feedback, please contact any committee member or Nuts & Bolts editor Pete Ellertsen, in 211 Beata Hall on the SCI/Benedictine campus, 525-1420 ext. 519 or by e-mail at <pellertsen@sci.edu>.