a. Program Name - Master’s in English

b. Report prepared by – Margaret Scanlan

c. Who is the current assessment contact for your program?  Margaret Scanlan

d. Should assessment information be sent to anyone else in your department? Elaine Roth (returns as chair July 1)  

1. What are the program’s educational goals? (Please take goals directly from your program’s assessment plan, and highlight any changes made this year.) 

Graduate students in English should develop the following skills and examples of work:
1. Scholarly paper doing relevant research from a coherent theoretical position
2. Ability to define an area of inquiry in a course, in a project, and its relation to the field at large
3. Ability to place one=s creative work in a tradition
4. Awareness of current state and relevant issues of a defined body of scholarship
5. Substantial original or independent work on a writer, a period, or a genre
6. Contribution to the exchange of ideas in the classroom using the tools of the field
7. Ability to present one=s ideas, written and oral, to a small group
8. Pursuit of complex thinking
9. Participation in discussions of the field (e.g., attending a conference, presenting a paper at a graduate conference; editing; publishing original work on the web; running a reading or speaker series; reading one=s own work)
10. Advanced use of disciplinary knowledge and terms

2. What assessment techniques did the program use? (Please take assessment techniques directly from your program’s assessment plan and highlight any changes made this year.)

Progress report checklist:  the Director of the Program and the Committee on Graduate Studies in English, in consultation with graduate faculty in a given semester, evaluates the student=s preparedness to
1) demonstrate intellectual engagement in writing
2) demonstrate graduate-level writing skills
3) conduct research
4) attend class, meet deadlines, perform consistently
5) participate in discussions, present papers orally

 Four faculty members (the four graduate classes offered this spring) submitted checklists.
     
Student survey (current students).  Administered in three spring classes.

3. What has your program done with assessment information this year? (i.e. communicated results to faculty, staff, alumni and students, made changes in the curriculum, made changes in the budget, addednew courses. . .) 

These checklists and surveys are being typed and collated and results will be shared with all faculty teaching graduate classes in English.  A quick reading suggests that students are generally very positive, though they would like more choice in courses (a budgetary issue we can’t address directly) and a few feel they need better advising.  We scheduled two classes for spring 2009 that several students indicated that they wished—contemporary American, English renaissance.  We will address advising in the fall. 

4. After reflecting on assessment activities in your unit, as a result of assessment what are two issues you would like to address? 

In addition to those indicated above, better ways of coordinating our offerings with student demand generally and additional programming for graduate students (speakers, other events).