Standard II		Planning and Evaluation
Nancy F. Weinstein		nweinstein@wellesley.edu

In its standards for reaccreditation, the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education has given particular emphasis to assessing institutional effectiveness on a continuous basis, and using the results to improve quality. Since its last reaccreditation, Wellesley has paid increasing attention to institutional assessment that informs planning and policy decisions. Two strategic planning efforts have been completed, along with numerous special studies; a comprehensive process of curricular review has led to significant change in the educational program; a new campus master plan has been developed and recommendations are under consideration; an Office of Institutional Research has been established; and the College's Learning and Teaching Center is working with faculty on issues of teaching effectiveness and student learning.

College-wide Planning Initiatives

Committee for Wellesley in the '90s: Shortly after the College's 1989 reaccreditation, the Committee for Wellesley in the '90s (C90s) was formed to provide guidance on strategic planning. Its charge from the Board was "to ensure that Wellesley College sustains institutional strength and creative vitality in a period that will bring difficult challenges for higher education." The committee's membership of trustees, faculty members, senior administrators, and student representatives, together with six campus task forces, examined programs, resources and external factors that would influence the College. In the report, accepted by the Board in February 1992, new priorities were established and, in some cases, old ones were reaffirmed. Equally important, a set of strategic indicators on the financial health of the College was put in place at that time. Virtually all of the committee's recommendations have been accomplished, shaping the academic, financial and student life of the College in numerous ways. The recommendations of the academic planning task force, however, fared poorly in Academic Council.

Curriculum Review: In 1993, in part to pick up the C90s thread, the dean of the College initiated a comprehensive process of curricular review and reform that extended through 1996. More than 160 faculty were involved in five task forces on degree requirements, pedagogy, common educational experience, technology in the curriculum, and interdisciplinary learning and teaching. A number of significant changes to the curriculum were passed in Academic Council, including (1) a new quantitative reasoning requirement for all Wellesley students; (2) a complete revision of the distribution requirements providing students with greater intellectual guidance; (3) the introduction of half-unit courses to afford greater flexibility in course design and innovation; (4) a revised multicultural course requirement. In addition, a number of additional reform proposals were deferred for longer term study. For a more extensive discussion, please see Standard Four, Programs and Instruction.

Task Force on Plans, Priorities and Fiscal Policies: In April 1995, the president and chair of the Board of Trustees established the multiconstituency Task Force on Plans, Priorities and Fiscal Policies. The board was concerned that the C90s fiscal planning assumptions were no longer maintaining our financial equilibrium. The task force was charged to revisit the C90s financial strategic indicators and to recommend financial principles to assure Wellesley's long-term objectives of allocating resources efficiently and effectively to reflect the Colleges values and priorities, while operating in financial equilibrium.

The task force combined a careful review of specific areas of the College's budget with far-reaching conversations about such issues as the forces in the external environment affecting planning, the need and capacity for institutions such as Wellesley to embrace systemic change, and the relationship of the assumptions underlying the financial structure to the core mission of the College. The members examined financial planning assumptions in the context of the College's values, and sought options that would support a renewed capacity for educational innovation. An extensive compendium of comparative cost data supported their work. Please see Standard Nine, Financial Resources, for the financial planning parameters and other recommendations.

After the report was completed, the administration undertook a community education and consultation process, beginning in 1996-97, to review the cost areas highlighted by the task force and to suggest changes in practice and/or policy that might slow the rate of growth of the budget while creating new resources to support innovation. More than 300 people participated in these discussions. The Advisory Committee on Budgetary Affairs continues these discussions with an interactive web page designed to inform and solicit views of interested community members regarding the budget choices the College is making. Our aim is to promote responsible stewardship and creative approaches to cost containment.

Campus Master Plan: Concerns about the status of Wellesley'ss landscape and grounds, a unique historical treasure and an extraordinary resource for learning, prompted consultation with a Visiting Committee on the Future of the Campus Landscape in October 1996. The group's report adjured us to develop an integrated approach to renewal and maintenance of this important resource, rather than a piecemeal approach to a series of problems needing solution. As a consequence, in July 1997 the College commissioned the Cambridge landscape design firm of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, working with a broadly constituted steering committee and advisory board, to design a new campus master plan. A series of working papers was used to facilitate community consultations throughout 1997-98.

The campus master plan provides a comprehensive and long-term perspective on the improvements needed to "control the destiny of [our] remarkable and historically significant landscape": restoration, maintenance, and management addressing issues related to landscape structure and infrastructure; parking, circulation and wayfinding; signs and lighting; and scores of specific renewal projects. It also identifies alternative sites and broad architectural options for a number of major building projects that have been under discussion, such as a new campus center. All of this is ambitious, and we anticipate that recommendations will be implemented in stages over time, guiding campus improvements for at least the next 20 years. The last comprehensive master plan was completed in 1921.

Planning Conversations: In addition to the broad-based planning initiatives described above, Wellesley has been engaged in a number of community "conversations" designed to foster innovation in specific areas. These more decentralized planning processes, some of which are extensions of the curriculum review, examine different aspects of Wellesley's place in the world. They are intended to solicit many voices on what we understand to be our strengths, vulnerabilities, opportunities and obligations as we approach century's end. We now have preliminary and in some cases final results from a number of these efforts:

• Report of the task force on instructional technology, which recommends goals for technological support of the academic enterprise and estimates costs;
• Report of the task force on global education, which recommends a specific program of innovation that will enable Wellesley to build on already considerable strengths in international offerings, curricular and co-curricular;
• Recommendations -- on the curriculum and residential life -- from a process that examined the experience of Wellesley students in their first year;
• Recommendations from a Learning and Teaching Center project on the development and evaluation of teaching;
• A consultation process on student life;
• A study of our interdisciplinary and interdepartmental offerings, as the Committee on Curriculum and Instruction continues to pursue questions raised during the curriculum review;
• An exploration, through the vehicle of a new faculty fellows program, of the philosophical and practical issues related to expanding experiential learning opportunities.

Appraisal and Projections:

Wellesley has been engaged in an almost constant process of self-scrutiny during the last decade. In recent years, the traditional strategic planning model has been augmented with more decentralized planning processes, located with the people who have the expertise and will implement the results. Instead of a top-down "plan now, act later" model, this one is iterative, often combining planning with action, implementing changes as ideas take shape. The data backing these studies has improved in its consistency, quality, and breadth.

We are now beginning to bring together the results of these efforts, to consider them as a whole, and to make some clear choices about Wellesley's preferred future. These processes plainly present us with more opportunities than we can possibly realize. Even if our resources and internal capacities could stretch to meet all these opportunities, the environment for higher education today calls for us to be clear about our goals, persuasive about our contributions, and careful about our costs. To do that we have begun focusing the attention of both our internal constituencies and the extended Wellesley community on a few important opportunities that will make the most difference for the continuing success of the institution.

1. In the winter and spring of 1998, the College's senior staff (the president and her cabinet of senior administrators) distilled a set of priority initiatives from the various planning projects undertaken in recent years.
2. The president led a Trustee retreat in June 1998 to review and critique the proposed priority list. The Board examined carefully the broad areas of investment that will be needed to sustain Wellesley's strength, and concluded that it is time to launch another major fundraising campaign for Wellesley. A campaign steering committee of Trustees was formed, and will continue to guide campaign planning and priorities.
3. A President's Advisory Council of elected representatives from Academic Council and Administrative Council began meeting in the fall of 1998 to respond to the president's priorities for the next several years and to provide advice and counsel on communication needs.
4. In the fall of 1998, the College is issuing revenue bonds of $50 million through the Massachusetts Health and Education Facilities Authority to support several major capital projects that are unlikely to be funded in a campaign. Included among these are renovation of Pendleton East, the social sciences classroom building, and renovation of Green Hall, which houses administrative offices. All projects funded through the bond issue must be completed within three years.
5. During 1998-99, the College will design a process to assess the choices laid out in the campus master plan, set priorities, and develop a long-term implementation plan in the context of other institutional needs.
6. The process of refining the concept of a new campus center - and of related programming in and around it - will be an opportunity to continue a college-wide dialogue about the kind of community we are and aspire to be. This inquiry, which will take place during 1998-99, will be followed by further planning for construction and programming of the proposed campus center.

Evaluation

The extensive internal and comparative information gathered by the Committee on Wellesley in the '90s was a strong factor in its planning recommendations. As the College began collecting and analyzing more institutional data for decision support, the tradeoffs inherent in a decentralized institutional research system became clear. Although much internal and comparative information was available, departments often cited their lack of expertise, as well as time, for research design, analysis and interpretation. Data coordination and consistency, the ability to conduct research and share information across functions, and the capacity to approach questions from an institution-wide perspective were all significant areas of need.

Wellesley's Office of Institutional Research (OIR) was established in the fall of 1995. Its primary function is to provide the College administration with institutional information that can be used in making policy decisions. In addition, the office works with other campus groups who are conducting surveys on institutional functions, analyzing institutional data, or evaluating programs. Staffed by two FTE professionals, an administrator and student interns, OIR often calls upon advisory groups of faculty, administrators, and outside consultants to work with them in posing the most fruitful research questions and interpreting the findings.

Projects have centered around strategic issues and questions that affect the way we do business. The first effort assessed Wellesley's financial aid practices and suggested policy implications. Studies of graduation rates and retention/ attrition have looked at patterns among various sub-groups of students as well as findings from interviews with students who did not return to Wellesley. The office has supported the information needs of college-wide task forces in areas such as curriculum review. It conducts a number of surveys (of entering students, enrolled students, graduating seniors, parents, alumnae five and ten years out) requesting information on satisfaction, self-reported learning achievements, and perceptions of the campus environment. Many of these are administered in collaboration with various data consortia (CIRP, COFHE, HEDS) so that Wellesley can compare itself with other selective educational institutions. Recently, OIR has embarked on compiling a fact book with consistent and usable institutional data.

A centralized Office of Institutional Research has improved the quality of information available for planning and has enhanced Wellesley's capacity to analyze issues that cross organizational boundaries. OIR meets with senior staff at least twice per semester to set research priorities and discuss key findings of studies, which have resulted in a number of changes of policy and practice. For instance, the 1996 enrolled student survey revealed significant differences in computer ownership by financial aid status and ethnicity. As a result, Information Services has made a particular effort to ensure 24 hour availability of shared computer facilities in the Clapp library and dormitories, and has increased the number of laptop computers for short-term loan. Issues relating to student stress and social life, as well as the perceived climate for free expression on campus, surfaced in both the 1996 and 1997 enrolled student surveys as well as a parents’ survey conducted with other COFHE institutions. OIR staff presented a summary of these findings to senior staff, the Board of Trustees, academic department chairs, the student life division and the consultation committee on student life and the hiring of a new dean of students. Discussions about how best to address these issues are ongoing within the student life division and across campus, in the context of planning for a new campus center and other initiatives.

Standard 2.4 states that "...To the extent possible, evaluation enables the institution to demonstrate through verifiable means its attainment of purposes and objectives both inside and outside the classroom." In addition to the self-reports of learning contained in the student and alumnae surveys administered by the Office of Institutional Research, Wellesley’s Learning and Teaching Center has become involved in assisting localized classroom evaluation on issues of faculty interest. Examples include a study of how students approach reading assignments for their courses, and an examination of how changes in pedagogy in the introductory chemistry course have affected student learning. The chemistry department used its findings to further improve the introductory laboratory experience by hiring two advanced students as summer interns to redesign several experiments and make them more applicable to everyday life.

Wellesley is also participating in several long-term research studies that can provide important insights on student and alumnae outcomes. The recently completed Pathways for Women in the Sciences project, conducted at the Wellesley Center for Research on Women with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, was a six-year investigation of factors that influence women's persistence in science. Pathways involved a longitudinal study of the class of 1995 and retrospective studies of graduates from the classes of 1968 to 1991. Through questionnaires and focus groups, we learned a tremendous amount about how students experience college, select a major, and choose a career. Our alumnae shared reflections on their Wellesley education, as well as work and family issues they confront. The database remains available for further analysis. In cooperation with Wellesley and 27 other academically selective colleges and universities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has assembled a College and Beyond database that forms the basis for a recently published book on the long-term consequences of considering race in college admissions. Institutional data and alumnae surveys for three cohorts -- those who matriculated in 1951, 1976, and 1989 -- will provide a wealth of information on shifts in the demographic profiles of our students, changes in occupational choices, and the overall "returns" to investments in education at academically selective colleges and universities if the Mellon Foundation releases it for such use.

All academic departments, and some administrative units, prepare self-studies and are reviewed by outside visiting committees on a regular cycle, generally every 7-8 years. Since this enhanced review system began in 1993, 23 academic departments and two programs have been visited, as well as the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, and a review of landscape and grounds has been conducted. Please refer to Standard Four, Programs and Instruction, and Standard Five, Faculty, for further discussion of departmental visiting committees and faculty teaching evaluation.

Appraisal and Projections:

1. While Wellesley is engaged in a number of efforts to assess and improve institutional effectiveness, most of these are designed to collect aggregate information at the department and program levels. Except within the context of a particular course, we do very little evaluation of learning outcomes for individual students. Skepticism about student outcomes assessment is a philosophical issue for at least some of our faculty: "Wellesley's goals for student learning include not only mastery of specific course content, but also, and perhaps more importantly, openness to ideas, flexibility of problem-solving approaches, and an enthusiasm for intellectual activities". To encourage professors to focus their attention primarily on classroom activities that are easily translated into precise, quantifiable learning objectives is to level the playing field in a way that diminishes our unique advantages." There are also profound methodological challenges to assessing outcomes when selection is such a fundamental part of our success and when the results we hope to produce extend throughout our graduates' lives.

   Nevertheless, these conversations need to take place. Should we, for instance, be doing more to encourage faculty and departments to evaluate student learning outcomes in ways other than grades, e.g. in terms of general education or the major? We should also mention under this heading our continuing conversation about the topic of grade inflation. If we can establish clearly the meaning of the grades we assign, then we can feel confident that these grades themselves are an extremely important (if not sufficient) form of outcomes assessment.

2. A core team composed of faculty, a student, and two members of the Office of Institutional Research attended a NEASC Outcomes Assessment Workshop in the fall of 1998 to begin developing a student outcomes assessment plan appropriate to our institutional mission and culture.
3. Through a partnership between the Office of Institutional Research and the Learning and Teaching Center, we are initiating some pilot studies to help assess the strengths and weaknesses of different pedagogical approaches with regard to student learning. Instructional technology is the first area of focus, beginning in the fall of 1998.
4. Other outcomes studies planned during the next two years include a review of our students' performance on entrance examinations for graduate and professional schools (MCATs, GREs, LSATs) as they relate to entering SAT scores; a survey of young alumnae focussing on graduate school and early career issues, as well as perceived strengths and shortcomings of their educational experience; and analysis of Wellesley and comparative data from the College and Beyond database if we can gain access.
5. We will continue to build capacity and commitment to localized classroom assessment through workshops and discussions sponsored by the Learning and Teaching Center and other venues. Consultations for faculty on research design and assistance in analyzing results will be readily available.
6. The College will continue to encourage and support a serious discussion of what we actually mean when we say we are providing an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world, and how we can gauge the results. Such topics might be the focus of a faculty summer seminar or a symposium related to the celebration of the College's 125^th anniversary.

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