Progress and Planning Assessment
Progress and Planning
All academic programs complete annual Progress and Planning Reports. These reports reflect the content, purpose, and intent of the BOR’s Comprehensive Program Review requirements but are completed on an annual rather than a multi-year basis. Progress and Planning reports focus on productivity, viability, program quality, goals, and budgetary allocations specifically associated with those areas. Department Chairs share their findings with Deans who write an executive summary that is shared with the Provost. This process serves three major functions: evaluation of past efforts, planning for the future, and connection of results and goals to budget allocations. Annual Progress and Planning reports are submitted to and housed in Taskstream.
Progress and Planning allows programs to critically examine and report on the productivity of the previous year, the results of progress toward previous year's goals, program costs, and the quality of program and faculty contributions. Furthermore, the process requires goal setting for the coming year in which goals are linked to GCSU strategic plan pillars and goals, as well as anticipating budgetary needs for priorities. Feedback is provided from dean and VPAA that is essential to ongoing internal planning and assessment towards continuous improvement within and among the programs in each college.
The expectation for annual program review is that it is everyone’s responsibility. Program faculty, coordinators, and department chairs should work together to analyze data, make meaning of the analyses, determine strengths and challenges and identify opportunities for continuous improvement. Program faculty, with program coordinators, must collaborate to set short- and long-term goals and should engage in data-informed decision making for the improved quality, productivity, and viability of GCSU's academic programs.
Progress and Planning template.
Elements of Progress and Planning Reports:
I) Executive summary
Summarizes highlights for the program from the completed academic year; section can include both achievements and challenges.
II) Viability
Narrative, progress report on goals for current fiscal year, goal setting for next fiscal year.
III) Quality
Narrative, progress report on goals for current fiscal year, goal setting for next fiscal year.
IV) Productivity
Narrative, progress report on goals for current fiscal year, goal setting for next fiscal year.
V) Potential Budget Requests
for following fiscal year, linked to that fiscal year's goals.
Content of Progress and Planning Report
For some general guidelines for format, language and scope of Department Annual Goals, see "Writing Effective Goals".
Some of the key purposes for the academic departments' Progress and Planning Report:
• Identify program’s areas of strength and challenges;
• Promote data-informed decision making and planning at all levels;
• Improve academic programs' effectiveness and efficiency over time;
• Align program goals with departmental and college goals, etc. up to the Strategic Plan Pillars;
• Provide justification for departmental resource requests by linking to goals and citing viability, productivity and quality of the academic program;
• Align process with the multi-year Comprehensive Program Review process.
In light of these purposes, the following topic suggestions may help organize the goal setting and planning in the Progress and Planning Report to inform academic program decision-making:
Viability
USG Definition* (for CPR): Viability - the use of such considerations as available resources, student interest, career opportunities, and contributions to the goals and mission of the institution, University System, and state to determine whether a program should be continued as is or modified (expanded, curtailed, consolidated, or eliminated). Viability considerations are independent of quality measures; i.e., a high quality program could lack viability, or a program in need of considerable improvement could have high viability.
Data available for Viability:
1. Declared majors (headcount) by class (Fr-Sr)
2. Time to degree
3. Credits to degree
Quality
USG Definition* (for CPR): Quality - measures of excellence. Quality indicators may include, but are not limited to, attainment of student learning outcomes, a comparison of program elements relative to internal and external benchmarks, resources, accreditation criteria, relevant external indicators of program success (e.g., license and certification results, placement in graduate schools, job placement, and awards and honors received by the program), and other standards.
Data available for Quality:
1. Credit hour production by faculty
2. Average SAT by major by term
3. First-time freshmen entering GPA
4. Cumulative institutional GPA by term (fall, spring)
5. Demographics by program (gender, race, in/out of state, full/part time)
6. Link to SMART assessment plans
Productivity
USG Definition* (for CPR): Productivity - the number and contributions of graduates of an academic program and/or the number of students served through service courses in the context of the resources committed to its operation. (Additional measures of productivity might include counts of students who meet their educational goals through the program's offerings, including minors, certificates, or job enhancement, if such goals are part of the program's mission.)
Data available for Productivity:
1. Credit hours by level by course
2. Retention in the major
3. Retention in the university
4. Degrees conferred
5. Number of tenure-track faculty by program
6. Faculty production of research and scholarly activities (in Faculty Success)
Budget Requests
Estimated requests may be included in the annual Progress and Planning report to be considered for the following fiscal year and must be requested as part of the formal budgeting process in the fall.