2023-2024
Business Administration
Professional Accounting
Music
Sport Management
Environmental Sustainability
Geography
2024-2025
Biology (undergrad)
Fashion & Textiles
International Studies
Philosophy
Political Science
2025-2026
Human Development & Family Studies
Food Service & Restaurant Administration
Museum Studies MA
Psychology
2026-2027
Art and Design BFA
Biochemistry
Chemistry
Earth Science
Exercise Science
Geology
Media Studies
Meteorology
Physics
Women’s and Gender Studies
| Date | Action |
|---|---|
| April (year before site visit) | Dept Chair attends information session. |
| October 15 | Dept Chair presents names of possible reviewers to Dean; upon Dean approval, invites are issued to two reviewers and site visit planned for spring (usually April). |
| November 1 | Dept Chair establishes date(s) for program review and communicates to both Dean and Vice Provost (whose office prepares/ maintains paperwork for review). |
| March 1 | The Department Chair uploads self-study into HelioCampus for dean review. |
| March 15 | Dean approves self-study (may ask for revisions first); Dept Chair sends self-study to reviewers (pdf or url). |
| April | External Reviewers participate in a day of meetings (on Teams or on campus) that will inform the external review report. |
| May (30 days after campus visit) | External Reviewers submit their co-authored report. |
| May (or early next fall) | Dept authors a brief response to the external report (max. 5 pages) and submit a merged document (Self-Study, External Program Review, Dept Response) in HelioCampus. |
| Early fall | Dept Chair meets with Dean and Provost meet to discuss the report and to set the departmental agenda for the next several years. |
Note: Given that the final debriefing/planning session takes place the fall following program review, departments will not be expected to submit annual assessment plans in the June immediately after program review. Rather, their next annual assessment plan--the first of their new six-year cycle of annual assessments before program review--will be due in October, the month following final discussions with the dean and provost about the yield of the program review.
Purpose:
The aim of the Academic Program Review (APR) at SUNY Oneonta is to improve the quality of our academic programs by assessing what and how well our students are learning in each program, and evaluating the conditions for their learning, including the institutional support provided to the faculty delivering the academic programs.
The program review provides department faculty and the administration—and SUNY and the State Education Department upon request—with critical information about the quality, size, strengths, weaknesses, students, resources, and contributions of each program to the
mission of SUNY Oneonta This process also facilitates discussion about change and developing strategies to enhance learning in the program, and thus helps the institution fulfill its
commitment to continuous improvement.
There are four distinct parts of the program review process:
1. Planning for the review
Attending Information Session: Planning for program review begins a year in advance— typically, the spring before the site visit. The department chair (and/or program director or other designee, hereafter “department chair) attends an information session organized by the associate provost’s office that addresses the timeline, expectations, and strategies for completing program reviews.
Formulating Key Questions: The department chair’s first step is to confer with the dean to formulate key questions about the program that should inform the program review and help make it meaningful.
Selecting External Reviewers: The department chair submits to the dean the names and qualifications of a few disciplinary experts who are willing and able to perform the external review. (The department chair must first ask potential reviewers of their ability to participate and willingness to be included among a shortlist of prospective reviewers.) Upon dean
approval of two external reviewers, the department chair works with the associate provost’s office to invite them to visit campus and conduct the external program review in spring
(typically April).
Establishing the Itinerary for the External Review: The department chair drafts the itinerary for the external reviewers’ site visit and confers with the two reviewers to see if they want any other meetings added, finalizes the itinerary and then schedules the desired meetings.
Note: Externally accredited programs do not arrange and host on-campus site visits other than their accreditation or re-accreditation site visits. Having accredited status does not exempt an academic program from all aspects of the academic program review process described here, however. Since typically accreditation standards do not focus on student learning, departments delivering accredited academic programs must gather data on student achievement of program learning outcomes and provide analyses of that data to supplement their accreditation reports in order to satisfy our university’s (and SUNY’s) program review requirements.
2. Self-Study
Preparing the Self-Study: During the six months before the site visit, the department chair oversees the drafting and completion of a self-study, a comprehensive and evaluative analysis that focuses on student learning data, alumni data, curriculum, faculty, and resources, and tells the story of the program’s past seven years. The self-study begins with a summary of and short response to the last external review for the program and goes on to address criteria in five key areas: program information, student learning, curriculum, faculty and future goals. See the template below for more details on the standard organization and components of the self-study. You can find relevant data pertaining to admissions, enrollment, retention and graduation, and degrees awarded, on the website for the Office of Institutional Research. You can also submit a data request ticket there and/or schedule a meeting with the IR staff to discuss your data needs if you cannot find the information you need.
Finalizing and Distributing the Self-Study: An advanced draft of the self-study should be shared with the dean for feedback along the way. The final version of the self-study is due to the dean by March 1. After the dean approves the self-study, the department chair sends it to the external reviewers—ideally one month before their site visit. The department chair can send either a pdf of the self-study or a url to the self-study in Taskstream--depending on the preferences of the reviewers.
Self-Study Template: All self-studies must include, at a minimum, the following information:
- Program information
- Identify program learning outcomes (these can be imported from Taskstream).
- Specify the curriculum (program description and requirements) as represented in the Academic Catalog.
- Benchmark the program through analysis of benchmarking data (e.g. student market share information; employer demand; student completion/graduation data) and comparison to three programs in the same discipline delivered by other institutions;
- Include six years of data on students including information on numbers of majors, minors and graduates.
- Include six years of data on general education and service course enrollments.
- Explain the alignment between program learning outcomes and courses comprising the program, including prerequisites. Attach the most recent copy of your curriculum map.
- Describe the methods used to ensure comparable learning outcomes among multiple sections of a course.
- Explain efforts to assure that required courses and electives are offered on a schedule to meet the needs of various student constituencies. Attach 4-year maps to graduation.
- Describe the advisement procedures and the way the department assesses advisement effectiveness.
- Discuss the adequacy of the infrastructure supporting the program: physical facilities, technology, resources, general infrastructure.
- Student learning
- Describe the department's methodology of assessing student learning outcomes and provide specific examples and results of SLO assessments that evaluate student learning achievement in the program.
- If available, provide data on graduate placement for the last six years. Indicate year(s) of data collected and total number of student responses: percentage employed in the field, percentage employed elsewhere, percentage seeking employment, and percentage continuing education.
- Describe the program’s activities, including co-curricular learning (e.g. lecture series, department clubs, field trips, etc.), designed to enhance the success of freshmen, and the retention and learning of students through graduation. Use student data to support your results.
- Summarize assessment of student learning and any alumni survey results (or feedback), and provide evidence that the information is being utilized by the program to make needed adjustments.
- Discuss special achievements (e.g. Chancellor’s Awards, applied learning experiences, etc.)
- Curriculum
- Describe and evaluate departmental procedures for the development, review, and evaluation of courses, notably including courses that advance institutional priorities (e.g. inclusiveness, sustainability, service, applied learning) as well as culminating courses (e.g. capstones).
- Analyze the effectiveness of the program in achieving its goals and learning outcomes in the discipline and in general education based on annual assessment report data. Describe the procedures, criteria, and methods used to analyze student learning outcome assessment data.
- Describe the processes used to formulate and implement curricular changes based on yearly assessment of student learning data (e.g. addition or deletion of courses, change in prerequisites, etc.) as well as pedagogy changes adopted by the department in response to assessment findings.
- Include an assessment of the program’s strengths and weaknesses making reference to assessment data as available. Explain plans to improve weaknesses.
- Describe how the program distributes its assessment responsibilities across faculty.
- Faculty
- Summarize the faculty's qualifications with respect to degree attainment, scholarly and creative accomplishments appropriate to the discipline of instruction, and service contributions. Faculty should maintain a current CV.
- Explain how faculty accomplishments support the programmatic and departmental goals. Indicate areas, if any, in which greater strength would be beneficial.
- Highlight faculty innovations in teaching and connect, as applicable, to assessment results.
- Analyze the teaching loads and how they are distributed among faculty by rank and status: full-time, part-time, and adjuncts (number of courses/number of students).
- Describe institutional and specific department support for ongoing faculty professional development.
- Facilities and institutional resources
- Evaluate the adequacy of physical resources and facilities for program delivery, e.g. library, computer, laboratory and other active learning spaces as relevant.
- Briefly describe any other institutional support for the program, including offices focused on supporting faculty in research, pedagogy and technology use, as well as student-facing support offices and programs.
- Findings and future goals
- Summarize the major strengths and weaknesses of the program, and use the self-study results to establish, at least provisionally, future goals for the program. (These will be reviewed and possibly modified after the external review and subsequent debriefing with the Dean and Provost.)
- Propose a tentative timeline for accomplishing the goals and suggest measures that could be used to demonstrate that the goals are met.
Include the following documents in the self-study:
- Most current curriculum map w/ program learning outcomes
- 4-year map to graduation
- Annual program assessment reports from Taskstream
- CVs for all lecturers, tenure-track and tenured faculty must be entered into Digital Measures
3. On-site review of the program
The purpose of the external review is to evaluate the quality of the program and institutional conditions for delivering it, and submit a report using the template provided. Equipped with the self-study, the reviewers visit campus for a full day of meetings with faculty, students, department faculty, the dean and provost (or designee) among other campus personnel. The reviewers consider the insights gathered in the self-study, and check that alignment exists between the evidence (data) and the reported findings. Within 30 days of the campus visit, the review team will submit its external review to the department chair and dean.
The department chair shares the external program review with department faculty and dean, and crafts a brief departmental response (5 pages or less) that might gently correct any misstatements made in the review and otherwise, with an appreciative tone, respond to the reviewers’ findings. The department chair collates the self-study, external review, and brief department response, and uploads this collated document into Taskstream.
4. Debriefing and use of planning grid
The dean and provost will meet with the program faculty during the following term (usually fall) to discuss the report as well as the department’s response, and to discuss the program’s agenda, including any resource adjustments, for the next several years. The department should capture in a planning grid (see sample below) the identified goals, problems to address, improvements and advancements desired, assessment measures, and timelines for each after this meeting takes place and share with the dean to ensure calibration. This planning grid can be appended to the academic program review document already in Taskstream.
| Goals | Problems to Address | Desired Improvements | Assessment Measures | Timelines |
|---|---|---|---|---|