The following materials will be used for assessment. This represents a range of possibilities, not a list of requirements. Students are not required or expected to produce all of these materials, and faculty are not required to assess all of these materials. These just represent the most relevant assessment materials that might be available for assessing a student outcome.
Mentorship: Every student is assigned a faculty mentor who they meet with twice per year. During our annual meeting, the mentor will provide information about the students goals, their path toward achieving those goals, and present any key contextual factors that might be relevant to the assessment.
ANTH 301 Performance: Our “initiation” class for all incoming majors is the only course that all majors are required to take. They receive an introduction to the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of anthropologists and perform several assignments that may be used as a baseline for us to assess where they started the program.
Advanced Electives: We offer a wide variety of electives with a wide variety of requirements and assessments. During our annual assessment a faculty member can show any student work that they think might be relevant to assessing the learning outcome for a student.
Extraordinary Opportunities: We offer over 30 teaching assistantships annually, research opportunities, internship opportunities, and money for travel, training, field school. research, and conferences. Many of these activities are opportunities for faculty to closely observe a student’s professional development.
Sapiens Symposium: Each year we hold a student conference called “The Sapiens Symposium” in which students present their work. In the month leading up to this we also have an essay contest for the annual “Ibn Battuta Award” and several students use the symposium as a warm-up before presenting their work at larger regional and national professional conferences. Although not all seniors present at the conference, they are encouraged to do so, and many do. Presentations here, and submissions to the Ibn Battuta and other awards, offer an opportunity to assess all six outcomes. Many students will have also given a short presentation at the Sapiens Symposium as part of our ANTH 301 Initiation class, which can provide a benchmark for assessing improvement.
Methods & Independent Readings: Methods courses and Independent Readings create substantial opportunities for 1-on-1 mentorship and nuanced assessment of each learning outcome.
Grants, Applications, CVs, etc.: Working with their mentors and other faculty students usually produce graduate school essays, CVs, grant applications, and other materials as they prepare for the transition out of college.
Senior Letter Graduating seniors will also be asked to write a reflection on their growth and experiences in our program, and share at least one “showcase” example of their work.