Act 629 - Summary Reports on Institutional Effectiveness
Fiscal Year 1999 - 2000

College of Liberal Arts

German Undergraduate Programs

PROGRAM ASSESSMENT

Assessment Criteria and Procedures

The German Program assesses and assures the quality of its instruction, research, and service through annual evaluation of its individual faculty by students, peers, Advisory Committee, and chair. Assessment of the curriculum and courses is part of this process. Periodically, but no less than every five years, the program's effectiveness is also examined by the entire graduate faculty in consultation with the major advisors, who communicate with the students about their satisfaction with their course of study, and with the Curriculum Committee, which is charged with defining and streamlining overall course contents and proposing new courses, texts, and materials to assure a well-rounded curriculum.

All graduate teaching assistants receive extensive formal training in foreign-language teaching through a pre-semester workshop and two subsequent courses on foreign language teaching methodology. In addition, they are required by the Graduate School to complete a workshop on undergraduate instruction. The graduate assistants' supervisor and coordinator of the first-year program monitors the classroom performance of the teaching assistants.

Student teaching evaluations are administered in all graduate courses. Results are available to individual faculty members and are included by the chair as part of the annual faculty review process.

All students are advised by the graduate director who meets with each student at least once each semester to review the student's progress and plans.

Office hours are required by college and department regulations and are monitored by the chair of the department.

All candidates for the M.A. degree in German are required to:

    1. pass a specified number of graduate courses.
    2. demonstrate reading knowledge of a language other than English and German
    3. pass a 4-hour written comprehensive examination and a 1 -hour oral examination
    4. complete a thesis

All candidates for the I.M.A. degree in German are required to:

    1. pass a specified number of graduate courses
    2. pass a 3 -hour written comprehensive examination and a 1-hour oral examination

Assessment Results

Course-based performance measures are designed primarily to assess the individual student's achievement and to diagnose areas needing improvement.

Student course evaluations show that our courses and our faculty are well-received by graduate students. Faculty are always rated "good" to "excellent." These results are consistent with the high quality of our teaching faculty and with our commitment to providing the best graduate education available in South Carolina.

At the present time we have no information about the degree completion ratio, average time to completion, percent of graduates employed in the field, and there is no official mechanism for measuring alumni satisfaction with the program. Informal feedback from alumni about their level of satisfaction and their employment has always been positive.