In 2013 I took a leap of faith and moved from southern California to Tucson, Arizona to support student affairs assessment and research efforts at the University of Arizona (UA). I had always been passionate about assessment and, as my work evolved, I found it to be a powerful tool for tellin…
Image courtesy of https://us.itarian.com/itcm-network-assessment.php?frmReg=US
Last year, a call went out over the SAAL listserv asking for volunteers to participate in projects related to critical approaches to assessment in Student Affairs. …
The Student Affairs Assessment Leaders (SAAL) Listserv officially began with its first posted message on January 12, 2009. Since then, the Listserv has become a place for student affairs assessment professionals to learn about and to understand their role as it developed, to discuss emergent i…
Nicolas Tissot via Unsplash
Welcoming all of you into SAAL’s 11th year, I am writing today from the occupied territory of the Nuwuvi People, the seven tribes of the Southern Paiute--and especially, the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe.
With great delight and a good measure of both humility and an…
It’s been a year since the SAAL Blog was launched. We’ve had 33 posts in total and helped increase website traffic and unique visitors by more than 250%! The posts have spurred and responded to topics discussed on the listserv, as well as in the field at large. With a diverse range of topics covered…
The votes have been counted, and the results are in for the 2019 SAAL Board of Directors!
Ballots were distributed to 1,254 members of SAAL, and 220 of you responded. Results of each SAAL race are determined by a plurality of the votes cast. Thank you to Kellie Dixon and the Membership Committee …
Are you looking for assessment education or resources? Or how about structured professional development?
What if you could get both of those (and more) for free?!
January 21, 2019 marks the third start of our free, MOOC on assessment. With each run, we’ve made improvements by way of edits, ad…
SAAL has officially been in existence since December 4, 2008, and the first message was sent to the listserv on January 12, 2009! Today, we have more than 1000 members, and since 2009, we have participated in more than 2900 conversations on our listserv. As with most organizations, the heavy lifting…
All models are wrong, but some are useful. – G.E.P. Box
Earlier this year, I caught up with a colleague at a national conference who had recently taken a new position in student affairs assessment. Before she took the position we had discussed what to expect, but at this point she had been in …
What are we supposed to be assessing? What are we learning from our assessment efforts? How do we know if we are achieving our desired outcomes? How do we make sense of all the assessment data we do have? Whether you are assessing your own program, enhancing assessment within your unit, or coord…
As we approach the beginning of 2019, the SAAL Professional Development Committee would like to pause to celebrate the successful first inaugural year of the SAAL Blog. Thank you to our creative and talented blogging team (Daniel Doerr, Daniel Kaczmarek, Daniel Newhart, Melinda Stoops, and Eric Wals…
Is your assessment house the kind that gives away the full-sized candy bars or one that gets egged every year, as is tradition, by the neighborhood kids? With a keen eye and some patience, you can turn into a regular Assessment Van Helsing, and slay your campus assessment monster. Assessment monst…
I have worked in Student Affairs since I was an RA a long time ago, and loved every minute of it. I enjoyed working with students at both their best and their worst, sometimes within hours of each part of that continuum. I remember stories from that time early on, and still even keep in contact with…
With the barriers many in Student Affairs face to create buy-in for the much-needed assessments, it can seem like an Olympic winning when others begin to see the importance of assessments and participate. But what happens when you are past the data collection phase and your results are not what you …
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I was recently in a meeting when the subject of faculty and staff attitudes towards assessment came up in the conversation. The discussion evolved into a debate about whether it is important that university employees value, or embrace, assessment or is it…
In higher education, we have a number of forums where we are able to share our ideas and best practices and discuss the day-to-day challenges we encounter. We set up working groups and committees with our colleagues, we have professional development organizations and listservs where we share resour…
If you are engaged in assessing programs or services, you are likely interested in change – particularly in improvement. Improvement is a central tenet of assessment within the higher education context: We use assessment results to drive organizational or programmatic change – with the ultimate …
One of the things that I love about working in higher education is the balancing act between cultivating creativity and innovation while still reinforcing tradition and history. Our students are every day grappling with the past in order to push into the future. As educators, we try to get our stud…
