Hello Daniel,
You do not know me, but I feel like I know you. Okay, I do not know you, but I know your monsters. Perhaps more importantly (or more frightening), at least five cohorts of University of Connecticut (UConn) Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) master’s students know your monsters, too.
I recognize that you may be confused or even scared by this letter. However, my intent is to thank you for sharing your monsters with the world. You see, your campus assessment monsters (Kaczmarek, 2018) have served as a key component of my class on “Ethical and Political Considerations in Assessment” for my Foundations of Assessment in Higher Education and Student Affairs course since the fall of 2020.
Your blog post and others (e.g., Mahoney, 2020) play an important role in the learning and development of emerging UConn HESA student affairs assessment leaders. I use these posts to scaffold readings in the syllabus by helping to make concepts tangible for students. For example, your campus assessment monsters post is paired with chapter readings from Schuh and colleagues (2016) and Biddix (2018). While students may not retain some of the concepts from these chapters, I am always confident that they will remember a few of your monsters. SAAL blog posts can be useful to succinctly drive home key concepts for students.
In addition to complementing other course content, SAAL blog posts can serve as foundations for in-class learning activities. For example, a learning outcome for my “Ethical and Political Considerations in Assessment” class is that students will be able to identify at least two barriers to fostering an assessment culture in each of their professional sites. To make progress toward this learning outcome, students use your post to work in teams to develop and describe the assessment monsters that exist at their professional sites. Your monsters have inspired the HESA scientists, I mean students, to create hundreds of new monsters (yes, they are multiplying!). This class is also conveniently situated right before Halloween, so your monsters always hit the mark.
One of the challenges of teaching about student affairs assessment over the past few years is the rapid changes within the student affairs assessment field, students affairs, higher education and our society. As you likely know, books, peer reviewed articles and scholarly sources often are unable to keep pace with the evolution of our field. With this in mind, the SAAL blog is my go-to for timely course content for the sequential HESA assessment courses at UConn. The Mahoney (2020) was an important reading for students during the 2020 - 2021 academic year when all HESA students engaged in remote learning, and they needed to think about how to engage in assessment ethically and equitably on a virtual campus. I recognize that artificial intelligence is an important topic in our field, so I will likely include the Tullier (2024) post in my course readings next academic year. In short, the SAAL blog offers relevant and timely content that is relevant to the learning and growth of emerging student affairs assessment leaders.
As I wrap up this letter, I want to thank you again for sharing your campus assessment monsters with the world. I hope you and other SAAL members will continue to contribute to the SAAL blog, as your posts not only advance professional development in our field, but to serve to foster the learning of emerging student affairs professionals. HESA students value learning from student affairs practitioner-scholars, and the SAAL blog serves as a nexus for them to learn from student affairs assessment leaders. Let’s hope that other Frankensteins will emerge to create and share their monsters with the world.
Sincerely,
Adam
Author:
Adam McCready, Ph.D., Assistant Professor-in-Residence, Higher Education & Student Affairs, Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut
References
Biddix, J. P. (2018). Research methods and applications for student affairs. Jossey-Bass.
Kaczmarek, D. (2018, October 31). Slay your assessment monster. SAAL Blog. http://studentaffairsassessment.org/entries/blog/slay-your-campus-assessment-monster
Mahoney, S. (2020, October 2). Doing the right thing when it’s harder. SAAL Blog. http://studentaffairsassessment.org/entries/blog/doing-the-right-thing-when-it-s-harder
Schuh, J. H., Biddix, J. P., Dean, L. A., & Kinzie, J. (2016). Assessment in student affairs (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Tullier, S. (2024, April 22). How a slow adopter is thinking about AI. SAAL Blog. http://studentaffairsassessment.org/entries/announcements/how-a-slow-adopter-is-thinking-about-ai