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Free GRE plan hits roadblock
By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer
The Faculty Senate Executive Committee learned yesterday that plans to offer free Graduate Records Examinations (GRE) to a selection of students as part of UB's general education assessment plan has hit a roadblock due to a lack of financial support from SUNY.
The plan to strengthen assessment—which is required by the SUNY board of trustees—would use the GRE results as a means to assess student skills in mathematics, writing and critical thinking. But Carol Tutzauer, director for assessment and assistant vice provost of undergraduate education, said that a reluctance to cover the cost of the tests on the part of SUNY means that UB will implement an alternate plan in which GRE practice tests will be administered during workshops about postgraduate study and the graduate school admission process.
"I tried to come up with an alternative that will work in a minimalist framework," Tutzauer said. "We will work to validate those practice exams as assessments in the same way we would a normal, full-blown GRE."
The first GRE practice exams are expected to take place either later this semester or at the start of the next academic year, she added.
UB's efforts to adhere to the SUNY Strengthened Campus-Based Assessment (SCBA) initiative also is complicated by the fact that tests related to assessing mathematics and basic communication skills, such as oral communication and revising text and written communication, still are being developed by SUNY, Tutzauer said.
"There's been some implementation difficulties for those campuses that have elected to either use standardize testing or develop their own assessment measures," she said. "We're developing our own, but the problem is we have to validate them back against the instruments that are approved by SUNY—and they're still working on getting those instruments together."
Tutzauer also reported that a state mandate requiring that universities submit a "closing the loop" report based on information from their three-year assessment cycles begins in March. UB's report is not due until March of 2010, however, since the university's assessment plan did not receive state approval until 2006.
A task force that will examine the general assessment program in light of assessment data—as well as address other concerns about the general assessment program—is slated to assemble next year, she said.
Robert Hoeing, chair of the Faculty Senate and associate professor in the Department of Linguistics, College of Arts and Sciences, noted that some faculty are "philosophically opposed" to the increasing role of assessment in higher education.
"I just wish there was a way we could shove some of this back down the ladder to secondary school," he said. "We're taking over business from the high schools, basically."
In response, Tutzauer suggested that students' Regents scores might be sufficient evidence that students entering the university have met many of the learning outcomes required by SUNY.
"For many, if not quite frankly most, of those outcomes—with our student admission requirements—we could probably establish that our students have met those prior to arriving here," she noted. "Then we would only have to assess them in terms of those that are somehow deficient or don't meet those standards."
But Satish K. Triathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, also noted that stronger assessment standards are growing increasingly important among major accreditation agencies, including the Middle States Association of College and Schools.
"Nationally, because of the Department of Education in the last few years, this has become a major thrust—not only assessing in terms of education, but assessment in general," he said, adding that assessment requirements have been in place for professional undergraduate degrees for many years.
"My belief is it's not going to go away," he said.
In other business, FSEC members endorsed a proposal submitted by Walter Simpson, UB's energy officer, that would increase the amount of recycled paper used on campus. The resolution requires that all general purpose 8.5 x 11 white copier and printer paper purchased by all units within in the university be 100 percent post-consumer content, processed, chlorine-free recycled paper. Currently, only one third of the copier and printer paper used on campus is of this type.
The cost is estimated at about $10,000 per year, Hoeing said.
Eliminating the use of virgin material copier and printer paper puts UB in the company of Princeton University, Humboldt State University and Middlebury College, the only schools in the country with this policy, according to a document submitted to the committee by Simpson.