In 2001, components reported by Lander University are Majors/Concentrations and General Education. Since the CHE is considering the creation of a uniform schedule for all institutions' reports of components other than Majors/Concentrations, the dates for future reports are uncertain. The University's schedule, pending statewide coordination, is as follows: Procedures for Student Development, 2002; Library Resources And Services, 2003; and Academic Advising, 2004.

Students majoring in mathematics at Lander University supplement the basic curriculum by choosing an "emphasis option," such as graduate school preparation, business, computer science, or applied mathematics. Secondary teacher certification in mathematics is also available. Additionally, Lander offers the mathematics/engineering dual-degree program with Clemson University. This is a five-year program in which students complete the first three years at Lander University taking general education courses and 33 hours of mathematics (calculus or higher). Students receiving a positive recommendation from the Lander mathematics faculty then transfer to Clemson University and complete the final two years in the engineering major of their choice. Upon completion of the program, the student receives a B.S. degree in mathematics from Lander University and a B.S. degree in engineering from Clemson University.

Although some of the recommendations generated by these assessment measures have been deemed inappropriate by the faculty and others have not been acted upon because of financial limitations, several program improvements have been made in response to assessment data during the period being reported. For example, MATH 240--Differential Equations--now meets four times a week in response to 1998 exit interviews in which students suggested the need for the additional instruction time. Students each year requested that a broader range of courses in the major be taught. In response, MATH 390, Topics in Mathematics has been offered three times with varying content, including topics in statistics taught in response to students' suggestion that courses useful in preparing for actuarial exams would be helpful. In 1998 and in 2000, students noted deficiencies in MATH 451, the methods course in the teacher education track. That course has now been changed from a 2-credit course to a 3-credit course, in order to accommodate a broader range of subject matter.

As in the mathematics program, the remaining measures employed by the computer science program are an alumni survey, which is administered triennially, and an exit interview administered in the capstone course. Students and alumni have expressed satisfaction with the program and with the overall quality of their academic preparation, and have particularly expressed appreciation for the quality of instruction and the small class size that are characteristic of the program. They have also made suggestions and expressed concerns, which have been carefully considered by the faculty. Some of the students' suggestions involved improvements that were already being implemented for later classes, and they expressed an understanding of the financial and other limitations that prevented their ongoing concerns about class availability from being addressed. However, in several cases, their suggestions led to program improvement.

BIOLOGY:

The assessment plan for the biology major at Lander University is based upon four general program goals. The faculty aim to ensure that students graduating from Lander University with the BS degree in biology will (1) understand a broad spectrum of the accumulated knowledge in the field of biology; (2) have a working understanding of the application and performance of technologies and laboratory skills in the discipline; (3) be able to successfully enter and compete in graduate professional school programs, or be able to secure employment in an area of science; and (4) understand the vocabulary of the discipline and be able to communicate concepts in biology through the proper use of this vocabulary.

The Professional Knowledge Exam, which was implemented in 1993 to determine increase in professional knowledge that occurs during the degree program, covers content from all core and elective courses taken for the biology major. The table below, which compares composite freshman and senior scores on the exam for eight consecutive years, demonstrates that, while senior scores have--as expected--always been higher than freshman scores, the difference has grown. Throughout the period, freshman scores have been consistent within a narrow range. Senior scores from 1993 to 1996, however, were lower than those in subsequent years, reflecting the impact of program improvements that were reported in 1997.

Paired scores for each student were also examined. Data for the Class of 2001, below, show scores increasing from 39% to 172%, with an average increase of 87%.

While significant--and successful--changes based on these and other entry/exit measures were reported in 1997, no new program revisions directly related to exam data have been made since that time.

Data from the University Alumni Survey is reported by division rather than by major, and therefore information from biology graduates is mixed with that from graduates of other science programs. The most recent survey indicates that 100% of the science graduates perceived their first job to be related to their major and that 83.3% are currently in a position related to the major. The survey indicates a high degree of satisfaction with the programs within the division. On a six-point scale, the composite rating of the major program was 5.3 for science graduates and 5.1 for all graduates of the University. Instruction in the major was rated 5.5 by science majors, compared with 5.0 for all graduates.

Prior to graduation, an evaluation of the oral communication competency of senior biology majors is conducted in conjunction with a research project that is the basis for both an oral presentation and a written report. At least one faculty member and the remaining students in the class rate the presenter's organization, manner of presentation, use of standard English, vocal projection, and clarity, using a 5-point likert scale with a score of one being most positive. Over the past four years, the overall mean on the Oral Competency Check was 2.0. Student ratings of the student presenter tended to be somewhat more positive than those of the instructors, but they followed similar patterns, with the students rated most positively by the faculty also rated most positively by the students, and those rated most negatively by the faculty also rated most negatively by the students. Results from this check indicate that the majority of the graduating students possess above average oral communication skills but that student performance can improve. The division is exploring the possibility of increasing the number of student research projects required to be presented, in order to provide additional experience with oral communication.

Responses of seniors in the exit interview, which allows students to share their perceptions about the biology program, have been consistent over the past five years. The students speak well of the biology faculty, noting their strong professional training and the quality of their interaction with students, and they refer with gratitude to the time faculty members devote to students outside the classroom. The majority of the students are pleased with the quality of the program and with the curriculum. Nevertheless, each year the students have expressed an interest in expanding the variety of courses available and in offering courses in the curriculum more frequently.

In response, several of the courses that are offered by the biology faculty for the environmental science degree program have been cross-listed as biology courses, and the division has attempted to offer specialized major courses more frequently than the customary once every two years. Unfortunately, attempts to improve course availability have had little success because of financial limitations that have restricted the division's ability to increase the number of full-time faculty and because of the absence in the geographical region of potential part-time faculty with credentials qualifying them to teach specialized upper-division courses.

Records of Graduates Acceptance and Competitiveness in Graduate and Professional Schools demonstrate that during the past four years approximately 70 percent of the program graduates who applied were accepted into graduate and professional programs, including medical school, veterinary school, physical therapy and occupational therapy programs as well as MS and Ph.D. programs. The graduates electing to go into Ph.D. programs have been accepted into a variety of selective universities, such as Cornell and the University of Colorado Health Science Center-Denver, as well as regional universities, including the University of South Carolina, Clemson, Emory, and Mercer. The feedback from our graduates indicates that they are strongly competitive at the graduate level. Two of our recent graduates have had a 4.0 average at the end of their first year of medical school, and several are now faculty members at large research institutions.

Lander University's general education program is based on seven goals and thirty-four objectives, and in order for a course to be approved as satisfying a general education requirement, it must demonstrably address some of those goals and objectives and must be appropriate for students who are not specializing in the discipline. The only absolute requirement is the freshman writing sequence, all the others being distribution requirements. Consequently, most general education assessment is conducted at the unit level, the only university-wide general education assessment being an assessment of students' writing skills. Academic units have developed measures to assess the success of their offerings in addressing general education goals and objectives. Assessment data are evaluated at the unit level and used for improvement of individual courses. A standing committee on general education composed of the chairs and deans of all academic units was formed in 1996 and charged with collating and analyzing assessment information and making appropriate recommendations concerning the program as a whole.

Of the 1998-99 students, 62.9% showed an increase from the freshman to the senior writing, 21.6% showed no change, and 15.5% had lower senior scores. The average of the ninety-seven entry-level writing scores was 2.26, with a standard deviation of .65, whereas the average for exit scores rose to 2.74 with a standard deviation of .69. However, in 2000, only 26.7% of the students showed an increase from the freshman to the senior writing, 18.9% showed no change, and 54.4% showed lower senior scores. The average of the ninety entry-level writing scores was 2.48, with a standard deviation of .70, whereas the average for exit scores fell to 2.13 with a standard deviation of .71. The 1998-99 scores were consistent with the scores from 1996-97 and 1997-98, which were reported in the 1998 Institutional Effectiveness Report. Since the 1999-00 scores appear to be aberrant, no action will be taken in response to them until after the 2000-01 essays are scored. At that time, procedures for calibration of readers will be refined to ensure uniformity in scoring; all readers will be calibrated together, and the entry and exit essays will probably be commingled. The significance of the troubling decline in the 1999-2000 senior scores will be more clear after that reading is completed.

Each academic unit at Lander University except the School of Education offers courses that are evaluated as a part of the general education assessment program. Three of those units--the Divisions of Humanities, Biological and Physical Sciences, and Mathematics/Computer Science--contribute a significant part of their effort to general education. Each of the remaining six units offers courses that may be selected to satisfy one three-hour distribution requirement. In addition, all units, including the School of Education, may offer courses to satisfy the requirement in Global Issues and Non-western Studies. The units with greater involvement in general education employ multiple measures to assess their general education programs, while the remaining units assess their offerings through surveys based on the general education goals and objectives that they aim to address in their courses.

UNITS WITH MULTIPLE MEASURES:

Humanities: In fall 1998, the Humanities division determined that measures previously used to assess general education had not yielded useful results, so they began to develop a new program of multiple-measure assessment for general education areas other than freshman writing, which is evaluated in the university-wide writing assessment. The new assessment programs for English literature and Spanish were implemented in academic year 1999-2000 and have already produced helpful data. Information from 1999-2000 also provides a baseline against which to measure future results.

English: Because students may choose from a variety of courses to fulfill their general education requirement in literature, the faculty long ago established common goals for all sophomore literature courses, regardless of specific subject matter. These goals and the university goals for general education, with which they are consistent, provide the basis for the program of assessment. The program employs three measurement instruments: (1) surveys that measure student perceptions of how well sophomore literature courses address specific goals; (2) writing samples taken from students in representative courses within the general education literature program; and (3) evaluation of individual course syllabi based on the targeted general education goals.

Writing samples from a representative selection of sophomore literature classes were scored on three criteria using a four-point scale, with four being the most positive. The criteria were (1) ability to provide specific evidence to support generalizations, using quotations and examples; (2) critical and analytical skills in the paper; and (3) awareness of literature in a larger context. The Assessment Committee established 2.3 as a realistic target for all standards; however, the mean scores from the assessment papers failed to meet this standard in two of the three areas, critical and analytical skills (2.22) and awareness of literature in a larger context (1.79).

The results of all three assessment measurements point to three general areas that need attention: 1) students need more practice applying critical and analytical skills in their writing; 2) students need to be made more aware of how literary texts interact with their larger contexts, including historical contexts, other literary texts, and the lives of readers who interpret those texts; and 3) students need to be given more practice in making informal and formal oral presentations. The committee has recommended that the English faculty reassess the expectations for the teaching of writing in sophomore literature courses, reexamine course designs to focus on texts in larger contexts, and incorporate a more extensive oral component into the general education courses. Because of the workload involved with writing-intensive courses and the class time consumed by oral presentations by students, the ability of the faculty to act on these recommendations will depend upon the maintenance of reasonable class size.

Spanish: Lander's general education program requires that students demonstrate competency in a foreign language equivalent to that achieved in one year of college study. Most of the students elect to study Spanish, and the Spanish faculty has designed a multiple-measure assessment program to ensure that the courses are meeting their needs. The three parts of the assessment program are (1) comparison of individual course syllabi to the State and National Standards for Foreign Language goal areas--the five Cs: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities; (2) writing samples from students in a representative number of courses to measure student performance in meeting the goals; and (3) comparison of the scores of a representative number of students who are placed into either SPAN 101 or SPAN 111 (the one-semester accelerated course) by the Spanish placement instrument to their score on the same instrument administered as they exit the SPAN 102 and 111 courses.

Writing samples collected from a representative sample of Spanish 102 and 111 classes were scored using the South Carolina Foreign Language Academic Achievement Standards, which employ the terms beginning, developing, and expanding to designate the stages of language development. The Spanish assessment team expects that students who complete the general education sequence successfully should approach or achieve the initial stages of the developing level. The scoring was based on the following four-point scale: 4=the developing-low level; 3=the beginning-high level; 2=the beginning-mid level; and 1 =the beginning-low level. The assessment team determined that scores of 3 or above indicate an acceptable level of progress. The mean score from academic year 1999-2000 was 3.07. Although this mean score is within the acceptable level, the improvements noted are expected to increase the composite to 3.2 or higher.

The Foreign Language Placement Examination (FLPE) is used as a value-added assessment measure. Since students may exempt the foreign language requirement with a score of 30, the exit scores for Spanish 102 and 111 should be at least 30. Entry and exit scores were compared for a representative sample of students who placed into the Span 101-102 sequence; their average score increased 31% from 20.9 (placement) to 27.4 (exit). (The team notes that most of the students taking the initial placement exam had previously studied Spanish for at least two years in high school.) A representative sample of students who placed into the Spanish 111 course improved their scores from 28.75 to 31, exceeding the score required for exemption. The difference in the exit scores on the FLPE between the 102 and 111 courses caused some concern. The assessment team concluded that the students who are true beginners or are placed as true beginners need further contact with the target language in order to increase their knowledge and skills to an acceptable level. Therefore, the committee has recommended that the University increase the contact hours of 100-level Spanish courses from three to four per week. As an alternative, Lander should aggressively seek funds to establish a language resource center with multimedia equipment where students would be required to participate in a language laboratory environment for at least one-hour per week.

UNITS WITH SURVEY ASSESSMENT ONLY:

Behavioral Sciences and History/Political Science: At present the Divisions of Behavioral Sciences and History/Political Science are under one administration, so they have worked cooperatively on general education assessment. Data collected every semester from each of the general education classes for both divisions showed that a strong majority of the students felt that the classes were meeting the general education goals, and the positive responses were consistent regardless of the instructor of the course. Since the courses are apparently meeting general education goals, no course revisions have been made in response to the assessment data. The behavioral science faculty have, however, made an interesting use of these data. The surveys from Spring 2000 and Fall 2000 were analyzed by research students in Sociology 330--Measurement, Scaling, and Analysis of Data. The students presented their results both in a divisional faculty meeting and at the South Carolina Sociological Association annual meeting, using a PowerPoint presentation.

Physical Education and Exercise Studies: Among Lander University's goals for general education is an expectation that students "recognize their need to adopt attitudes and habits conducive to positive physical and sound mental health." Objectives related to this goal note that students should come to understand the basic principles of wellness and that they should learn to use physical activities as a means of relaxation and renewal. Each year, the Division of Physical Education and Exercise Studies surveys students in its general education courses to assess the extent to which the PEES curriculum meets these objectives and to determine the extent to which students agree that the attitudes and behaviors to which they have been exposed are useful. In 1999 and 2000, average responses to survey questions ranged from 3.23 to 3.92 on a 4-point scale, showing a strong degree of satisfaction with the course and demonstrating the students' perception that the course achieves its goals. This assessment survey has yielded similar positive results in past years and has not suggested a need for change in the PEES program.

Nursing: The School of Nursing contributes to the general education program by offering a three-hour course in wellness as an alternative to the four-hour courses provided by the Division of Physical Education and Exercise Science (PEES). The PEES faculty provide one hour activity courses for students who elect the nursing option, to allow students to complete the requirement. When the nursing course was offered in fall 2000, seven of the eleven students enrolled completed assessment surveys, which deal with self-assessment of behavioral changes related to general education goals. The survey uses a four point scale, with a score of four indicating greatest change. Composite scores on individual questions ranged from 2.6 to 2.9 with an overall composite of 2.8, indicating that the students perceived that the wellness concepts related to general education goals taught in the course had had a significant impact on their lives.