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English Department
Master of Arts in English
Assessment Plan 2007
Program: English Department, Master of Arts
Plan prepared by Karen Gindele, Director, fall 2004-summer 2007
Contact for assessment: Margaret Scanlan, Director fall 2007-
I. Program’s goals:
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
II. Assessment Techniques
1. Direct measures:
Portfolio papers (annual review of students’ work and progress)
L501 Professional Scholarship in Literature (research paper)
L502 Contexts for the Study of Writing (research paper or project)
Literary analysis (substantial essay from one elective)
Creative Writing (substantial work from one elective)
W609 Directed Writing Project
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, evaluate the student’s preparedness to
1) sustain work on a longer paper or project
2) revise work substantially
3) conduct research
Study Plan (mainly for advising purposes), identifying progress in coursework towards degree requirements
2. Indirect measures:
student survey (current students), under consideration
exit interview, under consideration
alumni survey, under consideration
External review every five years
Alumni surveys, exit interviews being considered
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