The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Hamilton College $330,000 to assess student learning in a liberal arts setting over a three-year period.
The award follows an earlier $50,000 planning grant by the foundation to the college in 1999.
"Hamilton is committed to assessing the impact of a liberal arts education on student learning," said President Eugene M. Tobin. "The public deserves greater accountability, and we are prepared to demonstrate the effectiveness of our educational program to students, current and prospective parents, alumni and higher education opinion leaders."
Tobin said the timing for this award is ideal. "We have just completed a solid baseline study that was funded by the Mellon Foundation and that provides us with significant student performance data on which to build. In addition" Tobin said, "this fall we are implementing a new curriculum, with several innovative, multidisciplinary changes, any one of which could have a serious and sustained impact on student learning. And finally," he added, "we are in the final stages of a strategic planning process that calls for ongoing, rigorous assessment.
"We are perfectly positioned, institutionally and in the broader higher education landscape, to undertake such an important study," said Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty David Paris. "Our new curriculum and the revisions we make as a result of this three-year study will create a model program for residential liberal arts colleges."
Daniel F. Chambliss, the Sidney Wertimer Professor of Sociology at Hamilton and a renowned expert in organizational structure and issues in higher education, will be project director for the new study. He served in the same capacity for the earlier Mellon project.
The new study will focus on the critical liberal arts skills of thinking and communication. Also to be assessed are student engagement broadly defined, academic advising, student expectations and students' overall educational experience.
Chambliss said the study will include pre- and post-testing of students to assess the specific impact of each new curricular change. Hamilton will also assess the impact of these changes in process by looking at individual students' work as they proceed through the new curriculum. Finally, Chambliss said, Hamilton will compare cohorts for statistical differences in performance, such as separate classes of students as they proceed through the program versus alumni who did not.
The college also plans to enlist several peer institutions as limited partners in order to compare data and to share ideas and enhance the quality of assessment work being done at comparable small, residential liberal arts colleges. The initial Mellon Foundation-funded study was conducted during the 1999-2000 academic year. It concluded, "Every indicator we looked at suggests that writing is a key strength of a Hamilton College education." Eighty-one percent of Hamilton alumni surveyed (vs. 66 percent of graduates from the College's peer group) reported that "their writing skills were greatly enhanced while at Hamilton, and that Hamilton [alumni] enjoy a significant advantage over peers from other colleges in this regard."
Hamilton alumni also reported more than their peers (49 percent vs. 38 percent) that their oral communication skills were "greatly enhanced" while undergraduates, although the report cautioned that Hamilton's leadership position in developing this highly valued competency was eroding.
Data from the Collegiate Results Initiative, a new assessment tool being developed by the Knight Higher Education Collaborative at the Institute for Research in Higher Education, validate Hamilton's competitive advantage in developing students' oral and written communication competencies.
Excellence in written and oral communication is also valued among prospective students and employers. In survey research conducted by George Dehne & Associates, 96 percent of college-bound seniors identified the ability to write and speak effectively and persuasively as being "extremely" or "very important."
Data from the Higher Education Data Sharing (HEDS) Consortium found similar results for alumni. Graduates of HEDS-member institutions said "communicating well orally" (88 percent, the top choice) and "writing effectively" (77 percent, the fifth most cited choice) were among the top five skills and abilities most essential to their current activity.
"The liberal arts competencies that we value so deeply - thinking and communication -are also the skills society values most profoundly," said Tobin. "When used effectively in the substantive presentation and exchange of ideas, these skills will form the basis for Hamilton's unique assessment of student learning."
