At the request of the Department of Accounting Chair, the department faculty met on April 11, 2012, to discuss assessment findings for 2011.

The Department Assessment Committee provided the faculty with copies of the 2011 assessment results [findings] and reviewed those results with the faculty.  For the combined [spring and fall] results, all competencies met or exceeded their target minimums [criterion], with 1 exception: the Leveraging Technology competency at the senior course level (determined to be a measurement error).  The faculty agreed that future efforts address and emphasize those areas that had the lower scores, even though those scores were passing, in an effort to improve in those areas.  Higher scores will also be evaluated for potential improvement and to prevent backsliding.

Though the AICPA Core Competencies are assessed at specific points in the curriculum [i.e., in specific courses], the Competencies are in fact "taught" in many courses throughout the curriculum.  Consequently, Closing the Loop involves effort in more than just the courses where assessment occurs.  Therefore, when assessment results indicate improvement is desired, faculty of courses where that Core Competency is taught [thought not necessarily assessed] will emphasize that competency more in future semesters.  That future emphasis could consist of modifying the depth and/or scope of the objective, changing the pedagogy used, or other items as determined by faculty judgment.  Of course, even objectives with high assessment scores will be subjected to faculty scrutiny to both 1) determine how student learning could be improved, and 2) to prevent future learning deterioration.

Subsequent to the meeting, the action items for each objective, as discussed in the meeting and indicated in this report, were shared with the accounting faculty.