GE Assessment

A Focus on Student Learning

The purpose of assessment is to ensure that students learn what we as an institution hope that the GE Program will teach them. A liberal arts curriculum should produce well-rounded individuals with a breadth of knowledge in subjects outside their chosen fields.To ensure that our students reap the greatest benefits of what Seaver College has to offer, we in turn examine ourselves as educators and as an institution to assess our own effectiveness at encouraging students to lead lives of purpose, service, and leadership and achieve mastery in the five core competencies of critical thinking, information literacy, oral communication, written communication, and quantitative reasoning by the time they graduate.

A Culture of Collaboration

Faculty and students in each area of the General Education curriculum collaborate, collect data, and analyze results to evaluate how their given area of GE achieves its desired learning outcomes. The resulting reports are then read and reviewed by the Associate Dean's Office and faculty who are members of the General Education Learning Innovators (GELI) team.

Team of General Education Learning Innovators (GELI)

The GELI Team is a collaborative effort of Seaver faculty, staff, and students to develop an effective, faculty-driven assessment of the General Education program at Seaver College. It was first conceived by faculty attending the AAC&U Institute on GE Assessment in Burlington, Vermont in June 2013, and began meeting during the 2013-2014 academic year.

Representatives from various areas of GE serve on the team, as well as representatives from Student Affairs, the University Library, and International Programs. The team also has three student members to ensure that student voices are heard and taken into consideration.

The GELI Team meets frequently to discuss faculty and student needs in assessment and to continue to improve our methods and plans. GELI Team members are encouraged to attend assessment conferences hosted by WASC, Pepperdine's accrediting body, and share what they have learned with their respective divisions to promote positive, collaborative, faculty-driven assessment. The GELI team also hosts workshops for faculty development. In the 2013-2014 academic year, GELI focused on assessing the core competency of critical thinking and organized two workshops to aid faculty in the assessing critical thinking in their programs. In the 2014-2015 academic year, GELI focused on aiding faculty as they assessed their programs' writing competency.