Susan B. Opp, Associate Vice President

California State University, East Bay is a comprehensive public university enrolling more than 13,000 students in the San Francisco Bay Area. The two campuses of Cal State East Bay offer 52 baccalaureate degrees, 35 master’s degrees, and a doctorate in educational leadership. Named a “Best in the West” college and a “Best Business School” by the Princeton Review, Cal State East Bay has a nationally recognized freshman year experience involving multiple high-impact practices, award-winning curriculum, personalized instruction, and expert faculty.

In 2011, the Academic Senate of Cal State East Bay embarked on an ambitious project to develop Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILOs) and, as a second phase, to develop a plan for assessing them as part of the academic review process. Through a series of extensive and inclusive activities including interviews with campus leaders; forums involving faculty, staff, students and administrators; and presentations to the Academic Senate, a consensus opinion of the university community was reached regarding the broad learning outcomes that graduates of Cal State East Bay should achieve as a result of their education. These Institutional Learning Outcomes outline the essential learning that forms the basis of a Cal State East Bay education.

While our ILOs do not map one-for-one with the DQP dimensions, the Degree Qualifications Profile has been a useful framework during the development and approval of our ILOs.  We have used the DQP to help us frame discussions regarding the meaning, quality and integrity of a Cal State East Bay degree and to examine linkages between general education, academic majors, and our ILOs.  Most recently, we embarked on an ambitious multi-year project for assessing general education learning outcomes across the curriculum.  The VALUE rubrics are being used as part of the GE assessment process which will include mapping the AAC&U LEAP outcomes to our GE learning outcomes and mapping our GE learning outcomes to our ILOs.  In addition, we are examining our undergraduate and graduate academic program learning outcomes for accordance with the ILOs and asking our faculty involved with programmatic development and change activities to examine their program learning outcomes for accordance with our ILOs using a DQP-like spiderweb model. We will be reporting the activities of our assessment activities, particularly in regard to creative and critical thinking learning outcomes, at a full-day symposium involving multiple local community colleges and CSU campuses planned for April 26, 2013.