G10 Plan for Assessment of the Graduate Programs

Educational Goals and Objectives

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese plays a crucial role in preparing students for an increasingly diverse and interdependent world. The department states its operational objectives in sections 1.1 “Mission Statement and Learning Objectives” and G1.2 “Graduate Programs Mission Statement” in this handbook. The graduate programs are designed to strengthen our students’ potential for communication with and understanding of other cultures, languages, and literatures, preparing them for success in the global workplace of the humanities, sciences, business, or in whatever field of endeavor they choose. To fulfill its mission, the department must excel in several areas.

• Exercise leadership in teaching, research and service at the campus, state and national levels to promote awareness of the rapid social change in our multicultural world.
• Offer a balanced and integrated program of study in literature, linguistics, culture and civilization, and language training to emphasize high quality, creative research and instruction at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.
• Continue to pursue new knowledge through research and investigation within our fields study.

At the graduate level, the department’s goals and objectives include a detailed knowledge of an area of specialization and related supporting fields. The graduate program provides a balanced distribution in several areas of study, as explained in sections G4.2 and G5.4 of this handbook. Given the educational goals stated above, assessment of the graduate program must measure success in the following areas:

• quality and breadth of instruction to convey specific, existing knowledge in the field
• quality and breadth of seminar instruction to train students in research methods and approaches to humanistic investigation as well as to develop their ability to read critically, analyze information, communicate ideas clearly, and formulate independent research based on bibliographic data, knowledge and critical thinking
• provide an integrated yet diverse curriculum in areas of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian linguistics and literatures to meet graduate research and career interests.

Assessment of the graduate programs must take into account the varied goals of the students who pursue graduate degrees at both the MA and PhD level. These may be MA students who wish to teach in preparatory or other secondary schools or at community colleges, or who wish to pursue PhD studies elsewhere, or who wish to continue graduate or professional studies in different fields. PhD students may wish to specialize in either literature or linguistics, may wish to teach at the university level, pursue advanced research, or enter into another professional career. The department recognizes the difficulty of meeting all the diverse interests of our program’s graduate public, and success may vary in some areas. Assessment of the graduate program must identify the varying needs and expectations of the students and measure the department’s success in meeting them.

Instruments and Methods for Assessment

Given the diversity of the areas covered by the Spanish and Portuguese programs, the department has Approved similarly diverse methods to arrive at a satisfactory assessment. The Department of Spanish and Portuguese has in place a series of assessment activities, including course evaluation by students, visits by senior faculty members to classes taught by junior faculty, visits to courses taught by teaching assistants, faculty coordination of lower- and intermediate-level language courses, TA evaluation of coordination, and so on. In addition, undergraduate and graduate programs undergo periodic revision and adjustment in line with recommendations from the Undergraduate and Graduate Studies committees. The general assessment exercise described in this document will evaluate the global success of our programs, in order to complement the feedback on individual instruction. It is not the intention of this exercise to assess individual students or faculty members, nor to discourage experimentation in pedagogical approaches to coursework. Given the large number of undergraduate majors in our program, and the considerable size of the graduate population of the department, the department undertakes assessment on a three-year basis, with staggered assessment of the undergraduate and graduate programs, as detailed below. In this way, there will always be three recent complete assessment reports available to provide input into the decennial departmental evaluations carried out by the College of Letters & Science. The department believes that more frequent assessment would not provide more useful or balanced insight into the situation of the graduate programs. Assessment of graduate programs will take place annually in a three-year cycle. To assess the department’s graduate program vis- à-vis its mission, as described above, the following instruments will be employed. Indicators of the department’s success in graduate education can be established through external review and ranking of the department by its peers.

Other measures of success, available from departmental records, include the number of applicants for entrance into the graduate programs, the percentage of those admitted, and the GRE scores of incoming graduate students, which all provide a measure of the quality of beginning MA and PhD candidates. From our records, and from those kept by the Graduate School, the department is also able to establish the percentage of students who complete the MA and PhD degrees, the average number of years for completion, and the percentage of MA students that continue on for the PhD either in our programs or elsewhere.

The department will also evaluate the placement of graduates in employment both within and outside of the academy. This information will be evaluated from departmental records not only to determine the percentage of graduates placed in employment positions, but also to evaluate the level and type of institutions into which graduates are hired.

As an important measure of the success and research productivity of MA and PhD graduates, the department will conduct a survey of graduates two years after completion of their respective degrees. The survey will provide information regarding placement success, rank hired in the field, professional activity (i.e., book and article publication, papers delivered at professional meetings, and leadership positions held in professional organizations), and the measure to which the graduates feel their training has prepared them for excellence in the field. Although the information may not reflect a direct measure of quality, it will indicate a great deal about the department’s position in the field and its impact on the profession through its graduates. A sample copy of the survey instrument appears in this handbook as GA5.1 “Alumni Survey for Graduate Program Assessment.”