Culture of Assessment

Assessment Committee Mission and Goals

The UNT System College of Pharmacy’s (SCP) motto is to make healthcare better. Our motto reflects the increasing contribution to healthcare that can be provided by pharmacists trained in the highly interprofessional and primary care environment present at the UNTHSC.  This also extends to the contribution that our faculty and graduates will make to develop new and more effective pharmacotherapy.  In realizing the College’s mission and goals, the Assessment Committee aims for improvement through ongoing evaluation and assessment utilizing a formative process to ensure achievement of goals. To accomplish those goals the Assessment Committee coordinates efforts with review by stakeholders, monitors the strategic plan and accreditation standards and ensures that student learning outcomes are tracked and assessed continuously. The Evaluation and Assessment Plan supports accountability and continuous quality improvement in the assessment of student abilities, knowledge, skills, values, and performance within and beyond the classroom.

Annual Reports of the Assessment Committee

Assessment Defined

The term Assessment refers to the wide variety of methods that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, and skill acquisition of students. Currently, there are fifteen major elements contributing to the attitudes and behaviors of a true culture of assessment: clear general education goals, common use of assessment-related terms, faculty ownership of assessment programs, ongoing professional development, administrative encouragement of assessment, practical assessment plans, systematic assessment, the setting of student learning outcomes for all courses and programs, comprehensive program review, assessment of co-curricular activities, assessment of overall institutional effectiveness, informational forums about assessment, inclusion of assessment in plans and budgets, celebration of successes, and responsiveness to proposals for new endeavors related to assessment.

Examples Include

Admissions Data, AACP Benchmark Data, Active Learning Exercises, IPE Activities, Mapping, IRATs, GRATs, Quizzes, Exams, Peer Assessments, Preceptor Evaluations, OSCEs, PCOA, NAPLEX Results, Tracking of Faculty Publications, Grants Funded, Invited Presentations, Curricular Changes.

Description of the Assessment Committee

The Committee assesses the patterns of student performance on a range of educational outcomes with the goal of gathering information for pharmacy programmatic adjustments.  At the beginning of each academic year the Assessment Committee, with the approval of the Dean, shall develop a formal charge for that year listing activities to be accomplished and individuals assigned to lead each activity.  Membership consists of the Assistant Dean for Assessment, representatives from the Office of Experiential Education, Office of Student Affairs, both academic departments and one or more students and preceptors.