Appendix A
Workshop Agenda

QUALITY IN THE UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIENCE

What Is It? How Should It Be Measured? Who Decides?
A Workshop Hosted by the
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
December 14-15, 2015
National Academy of Sciences Building,
2101 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC

Sponsored by The Lumina Foundation

Day 1—December 14, 2015

Paul Courant, Committee Chair, Professor of Public Policy, Professor of Economics, Professor of Information, and Faculty Associate in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Ellen Hazelkorn, Policy Advisor to the Higher Education Authority (Ireland), Emeritus Professor and Director, Higher Education Policy Research Unit (HEPRU), Dublin Institute of Technology

Paul LeBlanc, President, Southern New Hampshire University

Alexander McCormick, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Indiana University Bloomington; Director of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)

Marco Molinaro, Assistance Vice Provost for Educational Effectiveness, University of California, Davis

Roy Swift, Executive Director, Workcred, an affiliate of the American National Standards Institute

Jordan Matsudaira, Assistant Professor, Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University; Former Chief Economist, White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Moderator: Jillian Kinzie, Associate Director, Center for Postsecondary Research and National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), Indiana University

Andy MacCracken, Executive Director, National Campus Leadership Council

Emily Slack, Professional Staff Member, Education & Labor Committee, U.S. House of Representatives

James Kvaal, Deputy Director, Domestic Policy Council, The White House

Jennifer Engle, Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Aprille Ericsson, SBIR/STTR Program Manager, Innovative Technology Partnerships Office, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Moderator: Paul LeBlanc, President, Southern New Hampshire University

Elsa Núñez, President, Eastern Connecticut State University

Scott Ralls, President, Northern Virginia Community College

Sally Johnstone, Vice President for Academic Advancement, Western Governors University

Stanley Ikenberry, President Emeritus of the University of Illinois; Former President of the American Council on Education; a Co-Principal Investigator of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA)

Adam Enbar, President, Flatiron School

Moderator: Alexander McCormick, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Indiana University Bloomington; Director of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)

What actions are required in the next year or two to move us from current models (e.g., VALUE Rubrics, PULSE, and DQP) that are being implemented on an ad hoc basis to a system of quality measurement whereby a group of like institutions adopts a standard set of indicators and reports their results?

Now that the College Scorecard has been released, what further steps should the federal government (and, possibly, state governments) take to improve public information about the quality of undergraduate institutions? Are there improvements to the College Scorecard that are feasible and desirable in the near term? If so, who should be responsible for implementing them? What structures need to be put in place to assure that the College Scorecard is well-curated and that it can improve over time?

Should a group be assembled to create a core set of principles to guide the development of a general framework for measuring quality in undergraduate education--one that can be adopted by nearly any type of institution, e.g., 4-year university, 2-year college, online institution, “boot camp,” etc.? If so, who should be involved in that process, who should lead it, and who should fund it?

What might be the most appropriate role, if any, for the Academies? Could it, for example, serve an integration and synthesis role, bringing together and leveraging the good work that is under way (including the DQP, VALUE, VSA, and perhaps other emerging programs)? Might it also seek to broaden the emphasis from defining competencies and outcomes to working out the quite thorny assessment and consumer information components?

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