Higher Learning Commission Academy

In 2008, JJC joined the HLC Academy. The Academy was designed to help HLC colleges and universities develop assessment projects over a four year time-span. Our team, headed by Kristin LaTour, includes Patrick Stephens from Math, Barbara Biles from Soc./Beh. Sciences, Joe Offermann from Institutional Effectiveness, and V.P. Dennis Haynes from Academic Affairs. We attended the initial training and planning session in June 2008, and developed a four year plan to develop general education outcomes and assessment.

Our goals for this year are to

• develop general education outcomes using IAI General Education Curriculum requirements as a guide, as well as past JJC work on outcomes, and other institutions.
• get input on outcomes from faculty via committees, chairs and open forum discussions.
• publish final outcomes in the catalog, online, and in CurricuNet.

The following year, 2009-2010 we plan to

• develop a plan to assess one of the outcomes in a cross-department study and begin the assessment plan.

In 2010-2011 we will continue our assessment plan, and the last year we will assess findings and make future plans for other outcomes. Along the way, we will be publishing our work via newsletters, reports, and forums. The main goal is to sustain general education assessment across the campus.

As part of the Academy, we will be posting our work on the Academy website for other participating institutions to see. We also have help from and HLC mentor, and we will return to a final conference to report our findings and assessments. Every year we will also be able to participate in a special Academy track at the HLC annual meeting.