This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) University of North Carolina at Charlotte: Using the EIA [Excellence in Assessment] Application as a Catalyst for Intentional Improvement (Christine Robinson and associates); (2) Editor's Notes (Stephen P. Hundley); (3) Northern Arizona University's Journey to…

Professional development in higher education is traditionally viewed as occurring through participation in workshops, attending conferences, and completing learning modules. But sometimes professional learning occurs in informal and unintended ways. This article contributes to the collective understanding of informal professional learning in…

According to the authors, in 2008 and 2009 a coalition of faculty, anchored by Women's Studies, challenged a proposal to bring United States Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) courses onto their urban public university campus. This proposal, initially approved by the faculty governance advisory committee on academic affairs, was…

In the first decade of the 21st century, the nation, the states, and colleges and universities began to grapple with the challenges of globalization, changing demography, the implications of the digital era, and of a less expansive public sector. Although not a transformative period for higher education, the decade saw significant innovations in…

Presents findings from a survey of art faculty in two-year colleges in Illinois, focusing on community college art departments and their faculty, articulation agreements between two- and four-year college art programs in Illinois, two-year college art curricula and their transfer orientation, transfer difficulties and student follow-up, and…

In 1991, the Illinois Board of Higher Education, working with Illinois colleges and universities, began an initiative to improve productivity, enhance quality, and refine priorities for higher education in Illinois. This initiative, commonly known as PQP, has focused to date on instructional research, public service, and administrative programs…

It is one thing to lament the financial pressures put on universities, quite another to face up to the poverty of resources for thinking about what universities should do when they purport to offer a liberal education. In "Powers of the Mind", former University of Chicago dean Donald N. Levine enriches those resources by proposing fresh…

Using original source documents, secondary sources, and the author's personal knowledge, this ten-chapter monograph traces the development of the Illinois junior and community colleges from 1946 through 1980. While focusing on the characteristics, functions, and legislative mandates of the colleges in the 1940's, Chapter I also summarizes the…

Community college planners must be futurists, projecting institutional and program enrollments and funding from tuition and state sources. Yet it is increasingly difficult to make accurate projections even for one year, when factors do not operate as they have in the past. Nevertheless, new trends in people, programs, finances, and facilities can…