P1: Build Your Own Assessment: Constructing Measures for Effectiveness in Advising
1-3 p.m. | Cost: $50
Levi Terribilini-Grand | College of Western Idaho
The landscape of higher education is one dominated by performance assessment which intends to measure the relative success of an institution. “What is our graduation rate?” “What percentage of our students receive financial aid?” “Is our enrollment up this semester?” The list goes on and on. There is good reason for this (whether we want to admit it or not). Well gathered and well interpreted data helps us to assess the extent to which we meet or fail to meet student needs. Despite the utility of assessment, its imposition upon the advising profession is a foolproof way of making advisors squirm. How, after all, does one measure effectiveness in a profession in which success is demonstrated first and foremost by the ability to build relationships and practice radical empathy? In this session, we will endeavor to answer that question first by unpacking NACADA’s advising core competencies and our individual institutions’ goals. We will then translate those competencies into workable models for assessment in our own individual contexts. Along the way, we will also think about how our discussions of assessment with our teams implicitly tie individual value to performance, and we will think about ways of intentionally disentangling the two.