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I had just left my faculty position in sociology to pursue national evaluation work as AAC&U's director of assessment. The first workshop I was asked to do after joining AAC&U in 2009 was on how to build a culture of assessment. Creating a Culture of Assessment May Not Be as Far-Fetched - or as Far Off - As You Think Considering how to reclaim the custom of course evaluations as active storytelling, rather than passive box-checking, could be part of your assessment culture creation. [Extracted from the article]

The article reports that campuses have been sending teams to the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Institute on General Education and Assessment. It mentions that the General Education Maps and Markers (GEMs) design principles for general education which includes proficiency, agency and self-direction, integrative learning and problembased inquiry, equity, and transparency and assessment.

The article focuses on the role of higher education in well-being and empowerment of students in the U.S. Topics include role of higher education in enhancing self-confidence and self-efficacy in students; the national Bringing Theory to Practice (BTtoP) project which focuses on student well-being as outcome of learning and the Engelhard Project to Connect Life and Learning of Georgetown University. Other topics include liberal education and college staff to acknowledge student well-being.

In this article, the author discusses the participation of campuses in the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U)Transparency and Problem-Centered Learning project. Topics discussed include survey of Transparency in Learning and Teaching processes in campuses that were part of the project, implementation of the project with the proper training of faculty members and development of students problem-solving skills.

The article focuses on the national trends in student participation in high-impact practices (HIPs) from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) in the U.S. and its associated learning outcomes through the use of campus-level assessment. It says that the practices have high degree of positive effect on the self-reported outcomes of students in three state systems such as California, Oregon and Wisconsin State Systems Data; however they are not uniformly effective. It mentions that campuses within the state systems have performed a good job in expanding first-year programming. It adds that college campuses should interrogate NSSE data and other forms of institutional data to help in advancing the knowledge of participation and access to sources of engaged learning experiences.

Though much scholarly attention has been paid to the emergence of female-headed households in Latin America, there is debate over where to place these households within discussions of poverty and resource deprivation. Two issues complicate this debate:first, the lack of multi-resource models in quantitative analyses to fully assess types of resource accumulation, and second, the broad failure for analyses of female-headed households to differentiate between different kinds of female-heads of household. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the scope of the research in the Bringing Theory to Practice (BTP) project, which seeks the advancement of knowledge and the establishment of best practices centered in the BTP triangularity of engaged learning, student mental health and well-being, and civic development. According to the authors, BTP has developed an aggressive research agenda through systematically evaluating funded projects that intentionally address this triangularity. Principally, the article talks about the development and design of a research approach, encapsulates findings to date and describes future research directions.

The article focuses how Dickinson College based in Carlisle, Pennsylvania uses engaged learning and participation activities to foster student well-being within a liberal learning context. Anchored on the goals of Bringing Theory to Practice (BTP) project, the campus implemented an ambitious engaged learning initiative for first-year students with an accompanying research project to assess what impact these experiences have had on student engagement, well-being, alcohol use and civic engagement. After the implementation, it was shown that higher depression levels of students are largely manifestations of stress that developed in response to the additional time commitment of their off-campus community work.

We examine the effect of the school racial composition of teachers and the school racial composition of students on the job satisfaction, school commitment, and career commitment of teachers in 405 schools in a large urban school system. We rely on arguments from relational demography theory, racial prejudice literature, and status characteristics theory, which identify variables that mediate this observed relationship between racial composition and satisfaction and commitment. Consistent with the nonsymmetry argument, racial composition effects are found for White but hot Black teachers. The most support is found for the relational demography and racial prejudice claims that White teachers "mismatched" to contexts where their race is hot dominant experience greater role conflict, less autonomy, inadequate resources, and reduced coworker support. These work conditions then reduce their job satisfaction and school commitment. Commitment to one's teaching career is not affected by school racial composition, however. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the reliability study of Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE). It states that the study was developed to gather data on the usability and transferability of rubrics both within and across institutions. It notes that the study was designed to address the extent of reliability and consensus in scoring across faculty from different disciplinary backgrounds. It notes that the study offers an encouraging opportunity for larger scale national and campus reliability analyses of the VALUE rubrics.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on the curriculum reform at the California State University at Monterey Bay (CSU-MB), one on the culture assessment at Sienna College, and one on the final narrative from Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College.

The article offers information on a report entitled "Making Progress?: What We Know about the Achievement of Liberal Education Outcomes," which provides an updated overview of national data on studies regarding student learning.