Accountability within faculty regarding student progress; communication with students about progress We have identified through discussions with students that there is uneven communication to students about their overall progress in the program. Students receive individual feedback from professors regarding progress in particular courses, but overall progress is not necessarily communicated. Likewise faculty members do not always discuss a student's progress with other faculty members and thus even a faculty advisor may not realize that a student is struggling perhaps in a particular area or needs to gain a certain set of skills.

How do we know that this is an issue? In 2003, the Ph.D. students in Educational Policy addressed a letter to the faculty. The letter outlined students' belief that the communication between faculty and students regarding student progress could be improved. Likewise, the letter indicated that in particular research preparation and appropriate goals before ascending to candidacy were not clear. In response, the department of Educational Policy held a series of retreats to discuss student needs. From these retreats, the idea of the annual student review (as recommended by one of the CID partner institutions last year) emerged. Current guidelines for student progression These are the current guidelines used by faculty in the Policy Studies program for assessing student progress.

Innovation Proposal: Annual Review of doctoral students in collective faculty meeting The program we would like to pilot would require the faculty advisor for each student to present that student's progress annually to a meeting of all program area faculty. The progress will be discussed and other faculty members will be able to add their opinions. Minutes of this discussion will be included in the file of the student after the faculty advisor meets with the student to discuss with them the faculty consensus. If any serious problems are brought to light, the student will be able to meet collectively with members of the faculty to address the issues. Feedback form for students This is the working draft of a form to help faculty provide feedback to students after the annual review. Checklist for faculty This is the working draft of the checklist faculty will use in preparing the review.

Why did we select this approach? We selected this approach because it was felt we needed to create a formal process which allowed faculty to explicitly communicate with each other before the creation of the dissertation committee. While the faculty strongly felt this already took place, the students felt a formal process would provide a means for the students to be included in the process without removing the right of faculty to hold discussions without the student present. By requiring the faculty member to meet with the student and sign off on a summary of the report and when necessary create goals, a certain degree of accountability is guaranteed. As with most things, we expect that some faculty and some students will take advantage of the process more than others, but that the written record will become important. Likewise, we believe that the conversation between faculty members may allow faculty to better identify problem areas early on.

What is the intended effect of the innovation? This innovation would create an explicated system of accountability both to the students and to the other faculty members. It strengthens the faculty advisor/mentor relationship by adding a formal element to it. We feel student learning and progress will be strengthened and fewer students will fall through the cracks.

What data or evidence will demonstrate the effect of our innovation? After the process we will survey the faculty and students involved and ask for suggestions. As the attached survey shows, we are interested in open-ended responses to the process at this point. The program area we have selected for this pilot has a relatively small faculty (10) and therefore will be better served by this type of evaluation, at this point. We have about 25 active students and they tend to be very active so we expect they will provide us with appropriate feedback based on these questions. These survey questions will be sent out via email and then collected centrally. We will summarize the results to insure some degree of anonymity. We will also make it a topic of the fall retreat and take notes on the responses there. We will adjust the checklist and feedback forms at that point. We will re-pilot at the end of the spring semester in the same program area and hope to include 2 other program areas in the second pilot. At that point we will present the idea to faculty council so that other programs can decide whether it would be an appropriate project for them to undertake. Post-pilot survey This is the working draft of an open-ended question survey we will adminster to the pilot participants.