Department of Sociology, Social Work, & Anthropology

Assessment

DEPARTMENT’S MISSION STATEMENT AND PHILOSOPHY

The major missions of the department have traditionally been and continue to be to provide professional scholarship in teaching, research and service as follows:

1. Maintain an organizational culture that promotes human development, productivity, and continual learning for the faculty and students.
2. Train undergraduate majors and minors for enriched community living and productive and fulfilling careers in their field or profession by providing strong Liberal Arts education programs, a sound introduction to the theories and methods of social science and by teaching the skills and knowledge essential to the practice of sociology, social work or anthropology.
3. Give quality instruction to students seeking General Education with an emphasis on clarifying and understanding values; on understanding culture, social structure, social institutions and social change; and on increasing skills in human relationships.
4. Train graduate students for productive professional sociology and social service careers in academic and nonacademic settings.
5. Develop and maintain research programs that advance scientific theory and knowledge and which are relevant to the challenges of modern social change and to the solution of contemporary social issues.
6. Provide professional services to disciplinary and general publics (local, state, regional, national and international) for the dissemination of knowledge, the improvement of human relationship skills and the enhancement of quality of life.

A major goal of the Department of Sociology, Social Work, & Anthropology at Utah State University is to train students

...for enriched community living and productive and fulfilling careers in their field or profession by providing strong Liberal Arts education programs, a sound introduction to the theories and methods of social science and by teaching the skills and knowledge essential to the practice of sociology, social work, or anthropology.

Department faculty members are committed to developing and sustaining a culture of assessment to determine how well our programs meet our stated missions, goals, and expectations.

In keeping with the guidelines developed by the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges, department faculty members have developed assessment procedures to evaluate the programs in the department and use that information in program planning. Faculty members generated assessment plans guided by the American Association of Higher Education's stated "Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning," which include the tenet "Assessment works best when the programs it seeks to improve have clear, explicitly stated purposes." To this end, we have linked our department mission to program objectives and learning outcomes in a clearly defined and publicly available assessment plan. Our assessment plans include inputs, processes, outcomes, and feedback mechanisms.

Each of the programs in the department has unique objectives. Consequently, the assessment plans in the department are decentralized to reflect program differences. The department assessment plans, techniques, and activities for each program in the department follow.

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