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NEW OFFICE TO GAUGE SCHOOL’S
PERFORMANCE
One of the principle challenges
that confronted the School of Dentistry during the 2001 ADA
accreditation site visit was establishing an outcomes
assessment plan to qualitatively demonstrate our success in
achieving the School of Dentistry’s established goals and
objectives.
For those who were intimately
involved in the outcomes effort, it was apparent that, while
essential data existed, the process of collecting it from
various offices and individuals, making it conform to the
established goals and objectives, and utilizing it to make
improvements was both cumbersome and inefficient.
Building upon and learning from
that experience, the office of outcomes assessment was created
in the fall of 2002. Headed by Eileen Suffet, executive
director of academic affairs, the new office is charged with
building a comprehensive assessment program based upon the
School of Dentistry’s strategic plan and past outcomes
efforts.
“Outcomes assessment is
critically important to the success of our school. It
answers the questions, how well are we doing? are we achieving
our goals? are we satisfied with our results and if not, how
can we improve?” Suffet says.
Suffet is working with Larry
Eisenberg, systems liaison specialist, to develop a process
for collecting, storing and analyzing information regarding
academic endeavors. Their work will focus on the four areas of
the strategic plan: education and learning, innovation and
discovery, service to the community and leadership. As
measurable criteria are established and data is collected,
each area will be evaluated and their findings will be
reported to the executive management team.
“We hope to create a system
that can produce evidence of accountability, encourage
self-improvement, support on-going strategic planning, provide
evidence of fiscal needs and encourage continuing reflection
on our goals and objectives,” Suffet says.
Eisenberg has created numerous
databases to collect and house outcomes data. While much work
remains to be done, Eisenberg looks forward to having a system
in place which will allow the comparison of data sets at
different points in the school’s history.
“We’ve never had the
ability to compare different points in time. How were we doing
in 1987 as compared to today? It has never been complete. As
our databases become more robust, we will be able to do that,”
Eisenberg says.
Currently, the office of
outcomes assessment has gathered qualitative data on student
retention, personnel demographics and faculty evaluation. They
hope to broaden their efforts to include clinical quality
assurance in the near future. In the meantime, Suffet and
Eisenberg will meet with faculty and staff who are responsible
for ensuring the goals and objectives of the strategic plan
are met.
“Outcomes assessment is not a
new concept. Much of the data is already being collected. Our
intention is simply to confirm that the objectives are indeed
reasonable, that data can be used to measure these objectives,
and how and when this data is collected,” Suffet says.
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