UNK Assessment: English Survey

ASSESSMENT PLAN Once a year, all former English alumni will receive a chance to respond to a questionnaire included in the English Department Newsletter that is mailed to all former English majors.	1999-2000 ASSESSMENT The newly expanded Student Relations, Recruitment, & Retention Committee will work on new modes of establishing contact with alumni, since response to Newsletter exhortations to contact the department with information about current employment and/or feedback about experiences at UNK has failed to generate sufficient information concerning those areas.
	1998-99 ASSESSMENT The Alumni Survey is no longer included in the Newsletter due to lack of response. We send out our Newsletter to all recent alumni & select others, soliciting feedback in every issue’s Chair column concerning current employment and/or about experiences at UNK. For the most part, our alumni have not responded, despite the fact that technology makes it easy to do so. Some contact with alumni is maintained through individual faculty; along with alumni who live in the area or have ties with UNK, these students serve to provide feedback on relevant matters.
	1997-98 ASSESSMENT The department sent out the Alumni Survey as part of the Spring 1998 Newsletter. We received one response via e-mail that provided information concerning a former graduate and his spouse, both of whom are KSC graduates from the 80’s. One of these graduates works at Casper College in Wyoming as a writing center administrator and instructor; the other works as manager of a copy store. Positive aspects of our program cited included getting to know instructors as people, interaction with other students in Sigma Tau Delta, publication of work in student publications, and an amalgam of teachers who provided an education, not just a degree. The one course mentioned that might have been valuable if taken was Technical Writing.
	1996-97 ASSESSMENT The English Department Newsletter again solicited feedback from graduates but received no responses. Perhaps all those alumni who were willing to respond have already done so. Perhaps we need to dangle incentives in front of our alumni to entice them to respond. Or, perhaps, we should only send out the questionnaire every other year.
	1995-96 ASSESSMENT The second survey solicited only two more responses which again emphasized the strengths of the English department faculty and the importance of a strong writing background. Suggestions included offering courses in business writing, desktop publishing, and the teaching of traditional grammar. Since that particular student had graduated, courses have been added that teach business writing. The committee discussed the repetition of the students' suggestions to stress "traditional grammar," and felt that the place to discuss how to approach grammar problems would be in the English Teaching Methods courses as well as upper level composition theory courses. The composition director will work on approaches to and implementation of "traditional grammar" in English department courses and will present his suggestions to the committee.
	1994-95 ASSESSMENT The committee reviewed the Alumni Survey responses included in the last UNK English Department Newsletter that is mailed to all graduates. Although only eight alumni returned the survey, the responses reflected a broad spectrum. Graduation dates ranged from 1968 through 1992 and replies came from an elementary teacher, several high school teachers, a graduate assistant in another university, a college professor, and a lawyer working as a Legal Editor. All praised the excellence and personal concern of their English professors "not matched in any other department." Suggestions emphasized the need to stress writing, traditional grammar, and the teaching of composition. Since the committee received so few replies, they decided to mail another survey in the next English Department Newsletter in hopes of a better response.