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Galloway, N.J. — Jamael Harrison, director of Student Affairs Assessment and Communication, and Ashlee Roberts, executive director of Student Affairs Strategic Planning and Initiatives, were recently honored with the Anthology Catalyst Award for Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness.

This award recognizes Anthology users who have successfully grown in their assessment practices and influenced positive behavioral change using Anthology solutions. This includes developing best practices that cultivate and sustain a collaborative culture of assessment where results are used for continuous improvement efforts; implementing assessment tools and technologies that increase effectiveness by growing the total number of completed assessments, number of programs, students, and/or outcomes assessed; and helping ensure assessment cycle phases are completed on time. Also highlighted are innovative assessment initiatives that provide valuable insights and enable institutions to make data-informed decisions to increase curricular effectiveness.

To qualify for the award, Harrison said he submitted documentation such as their presentations and feedback from their workshop series, Bird’s-Eye View (BEV).  

“We launched this series last January to reinvigorate the use of our assessment platform, starting with Baseline, a survey tool," Harrison noted. “Our goal was to build a culture of assessment where staff understand how to design and implement assessment of student learning and operations to understand effectiveness and inform decision-making around programs and practices.

“The spring included five topics, each offered monthly three times per topic, with each building on each other. We continued this series this year, adding in another Anthology tool, Rubrics, and are currently training on the Anthology Planning tool for reporting and tracking assessment.

We’ve had Anthology’s Student Affairs Assessment software since 2018 or 2019, but COVID, staff changes and knowledge (and fear) of assessment all influenced how this platform was and wasn’t being used. We also submitted our assessment gamification techniques, including the Assessment Showcase, Scavenger Hunt and Escape Room.”

“This award is significant to our work at Stockton because it symbolizes the efforts to design an intentional and comprehensive training and development series that equips our team with the requisite skills and knowledge to strengthen student success and strategic planning through data-informed decision-making,” Roberts said. “It substantiates using a change management model to foster a culture of assessment that can now be scaled across the University.”

“I’m incredibly honored to receive the Anthology Catalyst Award for Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness,” Harrison added. “This recognition reflects our ongoing efforts at Stockton to build a strong, engaged culture of assessment through gamification, strategic planning and authentic campus-wide buy-in. Assessment is not just my work, it’s my passion and I believe it can be a transformative force in higher education when done with purpose and creativity. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and hopeful that this award will help position Stockton as a leader in evaluation and assessment on a national and global scale.”

Reported by Mandee McCullough

Photos submitted