Academic Program Review process changes

This year, we’re excited to introduce the UAF community to a number of positive changes to the Academic Program Review process.  These changes follow a more than year-long effort of assessing our old program review system and reimagining a more inclusive and collaborative review environment to foster program improvement and growth.  The process improvement effort involved many stakeholders from across the campus community, and we are grateful for their participation and hard work.

Last spring, the UAF Faculty Senate approved the new structure of Academic Program Review to take place primarily in committees formed at each college or school unit. By centering the review within a program’s own unit, the process will be more collaborative, informative, and introduce new ways for departments to work together towards improvement.

All active degree and certificate programs have been scheduled into a four-year review cycle, which includes a smaller mid-cycle check-in. Student Learning Outcomes Assessment (SLOA) reporting is integrated into the program review cycle, alleviating the spring deadline from past years, which was a difficulty for many departments working to complete assessments at the end of the academic year.

This fall, programs that are scheduled to undergo a full review or a mid-cycle review in 2022-23 will be using some new tools created to modernize the reporting and data access for program review. Reports will be submitted and reviewed via a web-based portal, and program data will be provided for all programs through an interactive dashboard. Program data will be disaggregated by demographic variables to support equity for our students, and data liaisons in each college and school have been trained to assist programs with data analysis when needed.  Programs that are not scheduled for a review this year will still be able to access their data and development resource materials.

Watch for communications later this month, when the portal and dashboard will be launched!

— Anupma Prakash, provost and executive vice chancellor
— Alex Fitts, vice provost and accreditation liaison officer