2019 Provost’s Award

The Provost’s Assessment Award recognizes excellence in program-level assessment and improvement of student learning outcomes (SLOs). The award winner is selected each year by the University Assessment Council (UAC) from a pool of degree program assessment reports that most strongly exhibit the award criteria: meaningful, measurable, manageable, and innovative. The other nominees for the 2019 award were the Interdisciplinary Studies (BA/BS) and Marketing (MS) programs.

MFA Book Arts is housed in the School of Library and Information Sciences, which is nested within the College of Communication & Information Sciences. Each MFA student takes a capstone course (BA 599) that culminates in three work products: a creative project, a thesis, and an exhibition. Program faculty use a collaboratively-developed rubric to evaluate all work products on a total of 17 discipline-specific competencies. The rubric elicits both ratings and qualitative comments from faculty, who then review the results together and discuss relative strengths and weaknesses observed across all student artifacts. Importantly, program faculty use the findings to create meaningful action plans intended to further enhance student learning/success. The University Assessment Council was impressed by the alignment, collaboration, and commitment to improvement in the MFA Book Arts assessment report.

According to one reviewer, “The MFA assessment forms are straightforward and address each of the competencies across a range of assignments and products. Outcomes are clear and improvements follow.” It is also worth noting that just two years ago, program faculty rebuilt their assessment process to be more meaningful, collaborative, and improvement-focused.

Book Arts MFA faculty, including program coordinator Anna Embree and instructor/studio manager Sarah Bryant, will be invited to a celebratory luncheon with the Office for Academic Affairs. Provost Kevin Whitaker established the UA Provost’s Assessment Award in 2017.