Lafayette College President Weiss created the Advisory Committee on Assessment (ACA) in 2009. The committee is charged to serve as a centralized and formal mechanism through which each Division of the College can collect and share its contributions to the achievement of the learning goals for students as stated in the College’s mission. Specifically, the committee is charged to do the following:
- Identify connections between division activities and the College’s mission concerning student learning;
- Create a common assessment vocabulary to facilitate communication about student learning across divisions and to the general public;
- Document existing campus assessment programs to avoid redundancies and identify gaps;
- Make recommendations about which college-wide assessment instruments should be used;
- Connect budget priorities to learning outcomes;
- Document progress on assessment for accreditation purposes;
- Advise the president and his cabinet on campus-wide assessment issues.
Current membership on the committee includes the following:
- the Associate Provost
- the Chair of the Faculty Assessment Committee
- the Chair of the Student Learning and Assessment Committee (SLAC)
- the Director and/or Assistant Director of Institutional Research
- the Director of Career Services or her designee(s)
- the Director of Alumni Affairs or her designee(s)
- the Vice President for Communications or his designee(s)
- the Vice President for Finance and Administration or his designee(s)
- a representative from the student body
The committee met four times during 2009-10 and plans to continue meeting periodically through the 2010-11 academic year.