Texas Tech University

Fall 2022 Newsletter Header

Join us at our upcoming professional development events!

Register online at the TLPDC

Fall Professional Development Series

 

Core and Multicultural Curriculum

OPA will administer the Fall 2022 Core Curriculum data collection on November 14th. Our work with course directors of larger courses has been productive, leading to clearer data collection for OPA and fewer email reminders, follow-ups, and overall frustration from instructors. Earlier this year, we met with faculty from the Political Science department to work on a method for TAs to submit data to the course directors to minimize data duplication, which worked excellently during the Spring administration. We hope to use this method as an example with other course directors in the future. We also created a way for instructors to complete multiple surveys if they teach more than one Core and Multicultural course. The Fall 2022 administration will continue until December 14th with follow-ups until December 21st. Our data collection has continued to improve each semester, with better response rates, fewer issues faced by instructors, and overall better data quality. 

 

OPA is online! Check out @TTUOPA

TTU OPA is on Social Media

OPA Launched its social media presence, and in just under three weeks, we already have a significant following! Feel welcome to check us out on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We look forward to using these sites to share assessment wins with the TTU campus and community.

Instagram FeedInstagram Engagement

The driving PURPOSE behind our social media presence is to EDUCATE, PROMOTE, AND CREATE AWARENESS about assessment happenings on campus. The social pages have already proven to be a great way to share our excitement about the various awards, scholarships, and presentations that come from our office. For example, the post about the Assessment Innovation Grant Winners had engagement from several colleges across campus and beyond.

This new audience is especially important as we begin to develop our 2025 QEP. Social media will be an additional method to communicate to everyone our progress and our ideas and hopefully receive feedback as well.

Mental Health PostSocial Media Helpers

So many people work hard daily to improve life on campus. We are grateful for the opportunity to highlight and promote these awesome people!

 

Communication Literacy

OPA has updated the Communication Literacy (CL) data collection tool and are ready for the first administration for the 2021-2022 academic year. This data collection tool will help us provide data to SACSCOC about meeting assessment goals set by the university. Each college and department have different requirements and definitions for CL courses they offer, but the tool allows flexibility for each course while accurately collecting data. We worked with the Registrar's Office to create a working dashboard of all CL courses and their instructors, which eliminates questions from the survey (i.e., Name, email, college, etc.). We will also include embedded data from the dashboard with course prefix and number for each CL instructor and corresponding branching logic. This will allow instructors with more than one CL course to complete the survey only once instead of multiple times. Scoring for the three levels of CL criteria were added, allowing for follow up questions if the scoring average is 2.5 or below. We plan to distribute the survey on November 1st with a deadline of December 7th.

 

2023 IE Award Application Announcement

 

SACSCOC Reaffirmation Timeline

OPA continues to make progress on preparing for the university's upcoming 2025 reaffirmation.  We have identified authors for each of the 40 SACSCOC standards that are part of our reaffirmation of accreditation.  The timeline below represents the “big picture” for our reaffirmation efforts.  In the short-term, authors will be submitting first drafts by January 30, 2023.

2025 Reaffirmation Timeline

 

AIG Award Winners

 

OPA Assessment Spotlight
Miglena Sternadori

Miglena Sternadori

By: Kara Page, Senior Administrator
 
What is your position and what do you do for Texas Tech?
I am an associate professor in the Department of Journalism & Creative Media Industries. I teach, do research, and serve as the coordinator of the journalism program within our department.

How long have you been at Texas Tech?
This is my eighth year at Texas Tech.

How did you get involved with assessment?
My department chair asked me in 2021 to take over the curriculum and assessment for the journalism program. I had served on curriculum and assessment committees at my previous institution, so I had a bit of experience with both. 

How do you use assessment in your job? What are some interesting assessment techniques you have used or are planning to use?
One of the new things I have started doing is asking faculty to fill out a Google form for assessment at the end of each semester. It's a bit more interactive approach than writing a 1999-style assessment memo. Last year, I also surveyed our journalism majors and minors. Although the response rate was lower than we had hoped for, the results are extremely useful as we are considering revamping our journalism curriculum. It is also an excellent addition to the yearly assessment report.

Is there anything else you would like to share about assessment?
Assessment is a chore for many faculty, but I always tell my colleagues that it is important to submit course assessments every semester because doing so is crucial to Texas Tech's (and, really, any university's) continuing reaccreditation. I also think we can do a better job at involving students more directly in the assessment process, which was my goal with last year's survey.

What is your hometown or where do you tell people you are from?
I was born in Sliven, Bulgaria, but I say that Sofia, the country's capital, is my hometown because that's where I grew up and spent a good part of my youth. My U.S. hometown of sorts is Columbia, Missouri, where I first arrived in 2000 on a non-degree professional development program for Eastern European journalists and later earned my graduate degrees from the Missouri School of Journalism.

What do you like to do when you are not working?
I like gardening and doing creative landscaping projects with desert plants, such as cacti and yuccas. Before coming to Lubbock, I had never lived in a somewhat desert-like climate. Gardening here feels incredibly fun and exotic to me.

What is something you have not done but would like to do?
I have never been not working super hard, and that is something I look forward to in my distant future. 

 

QEP 2025

The university's third Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) is underway!  A group of 44 faculty and staff compose the QEP Implementation Committee, and they have been working since May 2022 to contemplate projects and ideas for Texas Tech's next QEP, which will be focused on student mental health.  A smaller Project Identification Subcommittee is currently reviewing several data points to determine broad categories for the future QEP project.  Ultimately, the QEP Implementation Committee will decide on the final QEP project, which we hope will be confirmed by January 2023.  Behind the scenes, OPA will collaborate with the QEP Implementation Committee to identify assessment plans for the future QEP, all in the spirit of remaining compliant SACSCOC.

QEP 2025

 

Faculty Success Major Updates and CV Services Now Offered by OPA!

Critical Update: Texas Confidentiality, TTU Scholars, and Data Export of FS Records

This Summer TTU upper administration reviewed the confidentiality of Texas Tech University Faculty Success records that are exported to front-facing websites. Data within FS is subject to university access to information, but some data is automatically exported. Users in the system may notice the messages at the top of landing pages within FS that clarify these exports. These messages have been updated to reflect which screens are used for the THECB House Bill 2504, which requires faculty CV information to be publicly available when instructing undergraduates. This includes post-secondary education history, academic and professional history, and relevant publications. This information and the uploaded syllabus per course is exported to the Public Access to Course Information website. TTU will submit a letter outlining our compliance to the State to be received January 2023.

The other direct export of faculty data reflects on the Scholars.ttu.edu website, which connects scholarly activity to others publishing in similar fields to promote interdisciplinarity at TTU. Scholarly activity and grants are exported to this site, but we have updated the confidentiality features for this screen. Users will now be able to update a question, which defaults to Yes, that asks whether an entry may be exported to the Scholars website. Any time an entry should be kept confidential, users should expect to update this manually to No.  Full informational update sent from Provost Ronald Hendrick and VP for Research & Innovation, Joseph Heppert, and instructions for use of this new denotation can be found here.

CV Services & CV Imports

Last year, TTU gained access to the CV Imports features of Faculty Success. While this feature can be helpful in automatically importing a completed CV to the Faculty Success website and guarantee compliance, the use of this feature can be difficult if you are not familiar with the system. This dilemma led OPA to offer CV Services. We will upload your HB2504-required data from your CV automatically, so you (or your faculty and colleagues) don't have to.

Faculty CV Services

Over the summer, OPA began communicating to Chairs during Annual Assessment Reviews the introduction of CV Services. As a reminder, the HB2504 compliance requirement is for all regular, undergraduate classroom instructors to have their post-secondary education, relevant professional and academic positions, and relevant publications listed (proof via transcripts and justification statements are required for other accreditation, but not for the purposes of HB2504 compliance). For faculty with a .docx or .rtf CV, OPA now offers the service of uploading required HB2504 information automatically. This is process can be lengthy, but we hope this service may be helpful, especially to new faculty, seeking to complete their record. One last note, once this information is uploaded, it is never required again. If any user wishes to enter this information manually, CV Services will remove any duplicated information, or add to the record if feasible.

OPA has received about 10 CVs since the start of the Fall term, and we hope to be able to help more when we contact new faculty in October. If anyone wishes to take advantage of this service, please contact opa.support@ttu.edu.

If you have any ideas for changes to FS, or if you have upcoming reporting needs in the meantime, please reach out to OPA. We are always happy to discuss new ways of using the system. For FS-related inquiries, reach out to kenny.shatley@ttu.edu.

Office of Planning and Assessment