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University Program Assessment Committee (UPAC)

A page within Academic Affairs

University Program Assessment Committee Update for the 2024-25 Academic Year

Purpose: The University Program Assessment Committee serves to review and provide feedback to academic programs on their efforts to assess student learning and use that information to make improvements to the programs.  

Basic Outline of the Process:  The UPAC review is aligned with the process of Academic Program Review.  Departments/programs will submit an assessment report at two timepoints as they move towards the complete of their self-study for the APR process.   These two points are at 5 years and 2 years out from their APR review.  The UPAC has established a Canvas portal, a report template, and a report review rubric to guide units as they submit their information. See these resources linked below.  

Additional Notes:  Since UWL has a number of externally accredited programs and teacher education programs certified by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), the UPAC does not review programs who instead get regular feedback on their assessment work from these accrediting bodies or the DPI.  If  you have questions on your department or programs relationship to the UPAC process, please contact the UPAC Chair (Bryan Kopp, bkopp@uwlax.edu) or the University Assessment Coordinator (Patrick Barlow, pbarlow@uwlax.edu).

Overview

The primary responsibility of the University Program Assessment Committee (UPAC) is reviewing program-level assessment plans and assessment reports for academic programs in accordance with Undergraduate Academic Program Review Committee (UAPR) and Graduate Academic Program Review (GAPR) policies. This page describes the policies and processes that UPAC follows when reviewing assessment plans and reports.

 

Current UPAC Members:

Name Department/College UPAC Role
Bryan Kopp, Chair English, CASSH Faculty Committee Appointment
Weixu Lu CST, CASSH Faculty Committee Appointment
Nilakshi Borah Finance, CBA Faculty Committee Appointment
Mehtap Eklund Accountancy, CBA Faculty Committee Appointment
Karen Hart English, CASSH Faculty Committee Appointment
Terry Lilley RGSS, CASSH Assessment Associate
Megan Litster Health Prof, CSH Assessment Associate
Sam Cocks Philosophy, CASSH Assessment Associate
Cordial Gillette ESS, CSH Assessment Associate
Patrick Barlow IRAP, Academic Affairs Assessment Associate

Process and Policies

Timeline

Each program that is not exempt from UPAC participation is expected to submit two assessment reports to UPAC during a single APR cycle.  These assessment reports are due on February 15th of the academic years that are five-years and two-years prior to that programs next APR review.

The annual UPAC timeline of activities is outlined below.

  • Late September: UPAC chair sends an email to each program that contains their next submission deadline.
  • Early December: UPAC chair sends a reminder email to each program that is expected to submit in that academic year.  The email reminds the program that their report is due by February 15th.
  • February 15: Deadline for programs to upload their assessment report to Canvas.  The program will notify both the UPAC chair and the University Assessment Director of their submission.
  • Upon submission: UPAC reviews a submission and sends their review back to the submitter.  Any disagreements between the submitter and UPAC are discussed by those parties.
  • Mid May: UPAC forwards all gathered documentation to both APR committees.

UPAC Review Schedule

Please use this updated list to find your upcoming reporting time points based on your next APR review. 

UPAC Review Schedule

Forms, Guidelines, and UPAC Rubric

The assessment report, UPAC rubric, and review form are given below.

The Assessment Report Template describes the content that UPAC expects the assessment report to contain.  Please consult this document when writing your assessment report. The Assessment Report Template is a Word document that you can use to generate your report. There are annotations within the template to help guide your reporting  Any questions related to UPAC expectations or procedures should be directed to either the UPAC chair or the University Assessment Director.

UPAC will review assessment reports using the UPAC Assessment Report Evaluation Rubric.  A review letter will be written to highlight strengths of the department and areas for growth in their assessment practice. This  letter will then be forwarded to the submitter.  If a program does not agree with any portion of this UPAC evaluation, UPAC will work with that program to resolve those issues.  At the end of each academic year, UPAC will gather the assessment reports, the UPAC evaluations, and a listing of those programs that were expected to submit yet did not.  UPAC will then forward this documentation to both UAPR and GAPR.  The APR committees expect to refer to these UPAC reports when they review a programs assessment component.

UPAC Review Process

Each assessment report is assigned to two UPAC committee members for Review.  The two reviewers will not be members of the department submitting the assessment report.  Those reviewers select a classification for each criteria.  If the two reviewers disagree on a classification, they will seek to resolve their difference.  If the two reviewers do not come to a common classification, they will forward the issue to UPAC as a whole which will then determine which classification to assign.  Narrative comments, if any, that are part of the review will always be approved by the committee as a whole. 

How to Submit

Programs should submit their assessment report via a Canvas web site.  Please notify via email both the University Assessment Director, Patrick Barlow at pbarlow@uwlax.edu, as well as the chair of UPAC upon submission.