The Susquehanna University community has embraced the assessment of student learning in a collaborative, bottom-up fashion that has gone from zero to 60 in four short years. At the heart of that work is a deep-rooted commitment to the intellectual, professional and personal growth of each individual student. A unique aspect of assessment at Susquehanna is that everyone here contributes to student learning. To be sure, faculty have truly led the process, but they have welcomed a more holistic examination of the learning that takes place outside the classroom. All faculty, administrators and hourly staff have a stake in ensuring that they help students reach agreed-upon learning goals, whether in the classroom, in a campus work environment, or in a social context. Susquehanna’s combination of liberal arts and professional programs, with its cross- and multi-disciplinary curriculum, has created natural pathways for rich discussion about assessment.

The Curriculum Committee began to engage faculty, staff and trustees through an interactive workshop, asking what all Susquehanna students should walk away with upon graduation. A year-long process of refinement ended with campus endorsement of four major learning goals, and several supporting sub-goals.

Susquehanna’s main learning goals state that our graduates will be confident, liberally-educated persons who:
- possess an awareness of the creative, natural, societal and cultural forces that shape the world around them;
- possess an integrated set of intellectual skills;
- possess a mature understanding of self – mind, body, and spirit;
- possess an integrated sense of personal ethical responsibility.

One challenge we faced was how to engage all faculty and staff in mapping their specific work to the campus-wide learning goals. We all needed to rethink the relative contributions of classroom- and non-classroom-based experiences. How do we assess leadership opportunities, for example, whether in the area of athletics or student life?

Through a survey created by the Provost’s Task Force on Assessment, each department, program area and administrative unit identified specific ways in which they would help students meet each learning goal. It was very much a bottom-up exercise; the main purpose of the task force was to monitor the completion of the plans and provide support in the design and implementation of assessment tools. .

Administrative offices especially needed to think in new ways about how they interact with students. The business office decided to bring students into bill-paying discussions, shifting responsibility to students – real or symbolic – by addressing bills in their names, rather than parents’ names. Most departments also found they could structure a work experience for student employees that reinforce at least some of the learning goals.

How do we know if we’re on the right track? As part of a larger effort to gather baseline information related to the new learning goals, the Provost’s Task Force surveyed the 2006 senior class. Many of the programs and practices that Susquehanna has in place were shown to be helping students achieve these goals. For example, students placed high value on the mentoring relationships they have with faculty, small class sizes and doing internships and practica. The data also identified some missed opportunities for doing more. Seniors expressed a strong desire for even more opportunities to interact with diverse peoples, cultures and ideas.

An exciting outcome of our work has been a recasting of Susquehanna’s general education requirements to better support the new learning goals. The most substantive changes will require all students to take an interdisciplinary course and both an introductory and advanced course relating to diversity. In addition, all students will be required to have a cross-cultural experience whether in or outside of the U.S.

The notion that we are all cathedral builders, not bricklayers, helped guide our approach to assessment. Integrating learning components into all aspects of a student’s experience at Susquehanna is how we can ensure a high level of success for our graduates in a diverse and changing world.

Encouraging students to take advantage of experiential activities over the course of their college career is critical to their overall learning and development. Service opportunities, for example, help students build leadership, communication and team-building skills while strengthening civic engagement and social responsibility. Connecting the activities to coursework creates an even richer educational experience. When students reach out to help others, oftentimes their own lives are forever changed.

By the end of May 2007, work teams of Susquehanna University students, faculty and staff will have traveled to Louisiana six times to help residents of the New Orleans area recover from Hurricane Katrina. The teams have tutored children at Chahta-Ima Elementary School, delivered donations of musical instruments to Bayou Lacombe Middle School, sorted mountains of clothing donations, mucked out and gutted houses, and removed fallen trees and brush along roads, and assisted at area animal shelters. One student initiated an adopt-a-teacher program, raising funds to help teachers at Brock Elementary School replace supplies lost in the disaster.

Soon after Hurricane Katrina struck, Susquehanna’s chaplain noted that the need in the Gulf Coast will continue for years to come. People often have short attention spans and disasters are quickly forgotten after the initial surge of support. Would Susquehanna be in this for the short term or the long haul? We quickly decided that our commitment to the Gulf Coast would be for years to come. The need there is so massive and real. Student response to the relief effort has been tremendous, with more students applying for the trips than there are currently spaces.

Susquehanna’s hurricane-relief program is championed and coordinated by the Department of Residence Life and Volunteer Programs. Lutheran Disaster Response was instrumental in helping us make connections early on with host sites in Louisiana. Last fall we were fortunate to secure an AmeriCorps VISTA member to further expand the program. Susquehanna has been honored by an outstanding character and citizenship award from the St. Tammany Parish School Board, a bronze award from the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, and membership on the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.

The initial humanitarian impulse to reach out to the hurricane victims evolved into a transformational experience for the students. They left Selinsgrove hoping to make some small improvement in Louisianans’ lives and returned having been changed themselves. Team members gained new perspectives on life and how they can each help change lives. They built relationships not only with those they served, but with other team members, including the faculty, staff and board trustees who joined the trips. The passion students felt in serving others and the friendships they developed have even caused some of them to refocus their life paths.

To enhance their learning, students on the trips use a handbook daily with guided journal activities and information about the complexity of disaster response and impacts. It guides their reflections both privately and in group discussions. A new, optional interdisciplinary course, first offered in spring 2007, covers environmental, psychological, sociological, political and historical implications of Katrina and other disasters. Faculty and staff, in addition to local Red Cross members, enthusiastically agreed to teach as guest lecturers. The fully-enrolled course is easily adaptable to other natural disasters, preparing students to assist with flood, hurricane or tornado recovery, for example.

The sustainability of Susquehanna’s disaster relief program will be assured by ongoing funding. The 2005-06 annual fund appeal, which focused on Gulf Coast hurricane relief, met with great success. Alumni donations funded nearly all three trips last year. Current funding is through a combination of alumni donations, an endowed fund supporting student leadership, campus fundraising activities, and minimal fees paid by trip members. Other funding avenues, such as grants and other gifts, have potential for expanding the program so disaster response teams can mobilize for travel to the site of any domestic natural disaster, near or far from campus.

The higher education community has a significant role to play in addressing major societal needs and, at the same time, helping transform students’ lives through service.

Susquehanna University carried out the public launch of its Changing Lives, Building Futures campaign unlike any of its previous campaign kick-offs. Typically we had held a formal dinner to which we invited a few hundred donors to present the current state of the university and new campaign priorities. This time, at the urging of our board of trustees’ Campaign Task Force, we created a day-long campus celebration attended by about 3,200 alumni, parents, friends, faculty, staff, students, trustees and neighbors in the community. We combined two previously separate Homecoming and Reunion weekends, making the Saturday, September 30 kick-off the largest campus event Susquehanna has ever held.

The main purpose was to create broad awareness of the $70 million campaign with as many people as possible. A key message was that contributions come in all shapes and sizes and can be made by every graduate, every student, every parent and every member of our community. At a place where students are at the heart of a community passionate about teaching and committed to successful graduate school and career outcomes, there is always room for another mentor, advocate, internship sponsor, or friend.

Pre-football game ceremonies in the stadium brought some surprise announcements that reflected the “changing lives” campaign theme. The most dramatic was the presentation of a $10,000 scholarship to each of three students who, in the words of the alumni donor, “are working hard, who demonstrate potential, are thriving at Susquehanna, and doing it quietly -- maybe flying below the radar screen like I did.” The gift exemplified how one person, or in this case an alumni couple, can change a student’s life and make a difference in the world. The unsuspecting students were overwhelmed by emotion when they realized their hopes and dreams had just become more attainable through that generous gift.

To engage those who did not attend the kick-off, the alumni office sent an email link a few days later to the campaign Web site containing hundreds of images and video from the day’s events. The weekend’s activities were also reported extensively in our alumni magazine. To continue building momentum for the campaign, we encourage alumni, parents and students to contribute their stories about how Susquehanna changed their life to a special Web site: changinglives.susquehanna.edu.

While it is too early to attribute campaign gifts specifically to the launch, we have received much positive reaction from alumni and others to the September 30 festivities. Its success will spur us to continue seeking new ways to engage and motivate our extended university community for the benefit of current and future Susquehanna students.