Assessment & Evaluation Overview

At UC San Diego, we pride ourselves on the nontradition, and in the Division of Student Affairs, we see “traditional” approaches to assessment and evaluation and we question where and whether we see our students-and ourselves in these approaches.  In truth, we don’t always see all students and staff present in our methodologies, data, and narratives, whether due to biases on the part of those collecting data, the types of data collected, or other factors.   

We define assessment as a process of continuous improvement, and evaluation as determining the impact of our many programs on the student experience.  We frame assessment as a cycle of inquiry, starting with questions about student learning and our processes, moving through data collection and analysis to reflect on our results, sharing our findings with our communities, and using these findings to inform change.  We also know the student experience does not look the same for all students, and that it is imperative to ground our work in considerations of equity.

We must engage our worldview and critically reflect on how this impacts what we value, who sits at the table, and how we make meaning of data.  And we must commit to a practice that ensures that we do not need to say “equity-minded assessment” or “socially just assessment;” assessment itself must inherently be for equity. ²

Additionally, the staff in Assessment, Evaluation, and Organizational Development (AEOD) join our VCSA colleagues in making Strategic Commitments to Address Anti-Blackness  (p. 4). Part of the work of AEOD this year is to plan and implement a strategy for assessing how all VCSA units are meeting these commitments.  We, along with the rest of the division, look forward to reporting out to the campus community every August on how we are meeting our commitments, through outlets such as the VCSA website and Triton Time. 

If you have questions, comments, or feedback on the AEOD commitments, please contact Shannon Milligan, Director of AEOD, at smilligan@ucsd.edu.

1. Montenegro, E., & Jankowski, N. A. (2020, January). A new decade for assessment: Embedding equity into assessment praxis (Occasional Paper No. 42). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA).

2. DeLuca Fernández, S. (2015). Critical Assessment [PDF of PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://studentaffairsassessment.org/structured-conversations