For Council Members
The Student Affairs Assessment Council ensures the division isn't just running programs, but is actively proving and improving their value through shared data, training, and consistent reporting. The council serves three primary functions:
- Bridging the Gap: It acts as a collaborative hub connecting individual departments with the central Student Affairs Research & Assessment (SARA) team to ensure divisional alignment.
- Standardizing Data & Reporting: It ensures that every department is systematically measuring its impact, tracking student engagement, and submitting high-quality assessment data.
- Building a "Culture of Assessment": By bringing representatives together, the council helps departments move away from just "doing day-to-day work" and toward proving how their programs actually benefit students.
To achieve these goals, each Student Affairs department must designate an employee to serve as an Assessment Liaison (AL) to the council. Because this is a leadership designation, the selected individual must hold a management level sufficient to coordinate department-wide assessment activities. The AL acts as the primary link between their department and the SARA team.
Key Responsibilities:
- Liaison & Advocacy: Act as the primary liaison to the SARA team, advocate for institutional assessment initiatives, and encourage departmental colleagues to participate in related training.
- Coordination & Planning: Coordinate department-level assessment activities and maintain an annual departmental assessment calendar.
- Reporting: Complete and submit the annual department assessment report in accordance with SARA's reporting schedule.
- Engagement: Actively attend assessment-related meetings, trainings, and council activities to bring insights back to their home department. This includes becoming a Certified Assessment Champion.
These resources will help guide you as you work with staff within your area and/or department in building a Culture of Evidence within the Division of Student Affairs.
SARA's Assessment Toolkit provides practical resources to guide staff through the five phases of the assessment cycle.
Below, you will find links to the division's standard set of survey questions. These questions are a collection of pre-written questions designed to gather insights into students' experiences, perceptions, attitudes, and characteristics. The documents below are view only, so you will have to make a copy of them to add them to your Google Drive.
SARA provides all departments with two types of assessment templates. One template is for departmental objectives and outcomes. The second template includes departmental objectives and outcomes, program impact objectives and outcomes, and Divisional Student Leader Initiative (DSLI) objectives and outcomes. The copies of the templates are view only, you will have to make a copy of the template to your Google Drive before editing.
The Division of Student Affairs Assessment Plan Rubric provides a standardized framework for evaluating assessment practices across the division. This rubric specifies high-quality criteria to foster a common understanding of assessment best practices, serving as a valuable tool for SARA to provide ongoing and intentional feedback to departments. We use this rubric to evaluate your assessment planning over the summer and "closing the loop" in late spring/early summer.
Program Impact Outcomes
The primary purpose of the Student Affairs Data Lake is to help you measure the impact of your departmental programs, initiatives, and services on student success. By leveraging this data, you can expand your assessment efforts and add new dimensions to your metrics, helping to tell an even more detailed, holistic story of our division.
EXAMPLE PROGRAM IMPACT OUTCOMES
Divisional Student Leader Initiative (DSLI) Outcomes
While Program Impact looks at broad student engagement, DSLI outcomes focus specifically on our student employees and leaders. We have developed sample Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) tailored to the DSLI framework to help you track how your student leaders are growing, learning, and developing core professional competencies. If your department is participating in the DSLI, you MUST have a DSLI outcome represented on your assessment plan.