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Institutional Effectiveness Home Page
Templates for Document Creation
Academic Year
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The University of New Orleans
has conducted a yearly review of its academic programs since
the mid-1990s, but took an evolutionary step in 2001 by completely
restructuring its institutional effectiveness process. Currently,
the institution engages in ongoing institution-wide review
of all of its academic, administrative, and educational support
units and programs. The review is headed by the Coordinator
of Institutional Effectiveness, who reports directly to the
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. The Coordinator
chairs a 10-member committee made up of representatives from
academic, administrative and student support/units.
The academic departments and administrative/student
support units develop their institutional effectiveness plans
in accordance with both departmental/unit and university goals.
Academic departmental plans must be approved by a vote of the
faculty (and chairs must keep minutes of the meeting) before
being submitted to the appropriate dean. All IE plans/reports
are then reviewed by the respective college dean or division
head to make sure that the goals and objectives are congruent
with those of the college/division, and are then sent to the
IE Committee. The IE Committee then reviews the yearly IE plans
from the institution’s units to ensure that each has
a well-defined mission statement and clearly articulated goals,
measurable objectives (expected outcomes), and strategies and
assessment tools for achieving the mission. Academic departments
and programs are required to include at least two direct and
two indirect measures of student learning outcomes.
The IE Committee also reviews the end-of-year
IE reports from all the institution’s departments/units
to ensure that each is using their assessment outcomes to modify
the next year’s IE plan and thereby improve future performance.
The IE Committee has the authority to return IE plans/reports
to the departments/units with requests for modifications. The
yearly IE plans and reports are maintained in hardbound form
and are available for everyone’s inspection on the IE
website (ie.uno.edu).
Institutional Effectiveness is integrated with
the institution’s strategic planning process in both
a top-down and a bottom-up process. In the top-down process,
the Chancellor and Provost consult with the Vice Chancellor
for Strategic Planning and the University Planning Committee
to identify short-term and long-term strategic initiatives
that are of such importance that they should be addressed by
the institution’s
academic and student support services units. The IE Committee
circulates these top-down directives to all of the units and
then checks to see that they are addressed by all of the institution’s
units in their individual IE plans. In the bottom-up process,
the IE Committee evaluates all, requests for new funds in the
end-of-year IE reports and forwards all of those considered
to be worthy to the University Planning Committee. The University
Planning Committee then considers these requests in their deliberations
for the next year’s budget.
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