The Assessment and Program Review Committee is charged with regularly evaluating departments, programs, cornerstones and competencies.  APRC has adopted the following process and criteria for all major reviews and annual updates.  It is the intent of these guidelines to lead departments and programs to an analytical assessment of, and not simply a description of, departments and programs.  Emphasis is placed on strengths, concerns and issues for the future for each department and program.  These guidelines will allow individual program reviews to flow directly into the assessment of the College for future North Central accreditations.  More importantly, this self-assessment will help departments and programs to build upon their strengths and make plans to remedy areas of weakness.

Factual data about the department should appear as an addendum to the document, most of which will be supplied by administrative offices and all of which is to be reviewed by the department chair and department members.  Writers of program reviews should focus on a careful analysis of the department and its programming.  In general terms, the committee is looking for clear articulation of departmental goals (both long and short term) in relation to the department’s mission statement and an evaluation of the department’s ability to deliver on the goals.

Note:  the term “department” will be used throughout the following as a synonym for “program” simply to ease readability.  Also, in some cases isolated items listed might not apply to a specific department or program.