Investment in Student Success Brings Returns

Message from William B. “Bill” Davis, Interim Vice Provost for Academic Engagement and Student Achievement

Post-winter and pre-spring breaks. This is a time of year when the calendar seems to turn faster, but I do keep noticing that little-bit-longer period of daylight in the mornings and evenings that tells me a new season is coming soon. I hope that everyone reading this is doing well and is healthy.

Looking ahead on the spring calendar, I see that it is filled with many events that DAESA programs and people will plan and lead. This recognition leads me to think a bit deeper about the individuals at WSU who are served by DAESA. I marvel at how challenging it is to receive feedback from the individuals that are at the heart of our work—the students of WSU. So, when opportunities to receive feedback come along, we should pause and listen to what they are telling us.

In 2023, I had the honor of supporting Kimberly Green (this edition’s featured person) and her Office of Assessment for Curricular Effectiveness (ACE) colleagues as well as Nathan Lindstedt in the WSU Office of Institutional Research as they helped us collect and analyze data on the National Survey of Student Effectiveness (NSSE). This instrument allows us to hear from WSU’s first-year and senior students. The NSSE instrument measures student engagement and satisfaction related to many elements of university culture to which DAESA units contribute. Since we recently received our NSSE 2023 campus-level data for WSU Pullman, where many of DAESA’s programs are focused, I thought in this edition of the STAR that I’d like to take a bit of time to highlight and celebrate these accomplishments. If you want to follow along with the highlights I relate below, you can use your WSU credentials to log into the Institutional Research website and access the NSSE Campus Reports under “Annual Reporting and Surveys.”

The first two examples are influenced by DAESA units in Academic Success and Career Center (ASCC)’s academic advising and tutoring areas, the Office of Academic Engagement (OAE)’s SSS-TRIO and Washington state programs, and the WSU Writing Programs’ Writing Center.

The two questions were: “How much does your institution emphasize providing support to help students succeed academically?” (Q14b) and “How much does your institution emphasize using learning support services?” (Q14c). The highest-frequency response was “Quite a bit” for both questions for both first-time/first-year (pg. 14) and senior (pg. 34) students, and the statistical comparisons show that WSU Pullman students rate our institution higher than their peers at a group of other Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) institutions.

Turning our focus to some high-impact practices, we see that our students reported high rates of planning (first-year, pg. 4) or having completed (seniors, pg. 5) internships or similar experience (Q11a), numbers influenced by our ASCC career services team. We also see good rates of undergraduate research participation (Q11e) due to efforts from the Office of Undergraduate Research and the DAESA grant programs that support student engagement in research.

While there are some areas of improvement on NSSE, I think it speaks highly of all our team members that 81 percent of seniors would choose WSU again (Q20, pg. 41 of WSU Pullman 2023 Frequencies & Statistical Comparisons) and 80 percent of our first-year students evaluate their entire educational experience after their first semester as “good” or “excellent” (Q19, pg. 21).

We should take a moment and enjoy these significant wins because they help make the hard work worth it!

Meet Our People

New Adventures in Store for ACE Director Kimberly Green

Under Kimberly’s leadership, ACE has grown to play a key role in helping faculty to assess student learning, with a goal to improve degree programs. ACE works with undergraduate programs, colleges, and the University Common Requirements (UCORE) general education program to design and implement learning outcomes assessment that informs faculty decisions about effective curriculum and instruction to support quality academic programs. This work also helps maintain WSU’s regional accreditation by the Northwest Commission on College and Universities (NWCCU).

Something that stands out to Kimberly has been the opportunity to work with people in so many different areas of WSU’s academic mission.

“I feel grateful for all the faculty and staff who worked with us over the years, who were willing to reflect on their undergraduate programs and aims for quality courses and curricula,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed getting a sense of each discipline, of the faculty’s passion for their field, and what they wanted to give their majors. People at all levels of the university have been a great pleasure to work with.”

Kimberly has been director of ACE since 2011. She worked previously as a learning designer and assessment specialist in WSU’s former Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology. From 2012-15, she also served as institutional accreditation/accreditation liaison officer. In 2013, she was named a WSU Woman of Distinction.

Prior to WSU, Kimberly was an instructor and learning center director for the English Language Program for international students at the University of California (UC)-Berkeley, and an instructor in the Department of English at San Francisco State University (SFSU). She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in English at UC-Santa Barbara, and her Master’s degree in teaching English as a second/foreign language at SFSU.

She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, West Africa, teaching English at Yendi Secondary School.

“Living in sub-Saharan Africa and learning to teach in a completely different context was a humbling experience that transformed my world view, including what extended families and communities can really mean. And what it means to meet people’s basic needs. And how friendship, celebration, art, music, and creativity are essential in our lives.

“I also came away appreciating the critical importance of clean, safe water and understanding more about the long-term impacts of colonialism.

“My two years of service as a Peace Corps volunteer, from 1985 to 1987, also shaped my career path. I’ve been in education ever since.”

As she prepares to leave WSU, Kimberly said she “appreciates the ACE staff who’ve contributed to our collective efforts over the years, as we navigated so many different things. I’m delighted to hand over leadership of ACE to Lindsey Brown, with Sara Mahuron on staff. Together they bring years of experience in student learning outcomes assessment and work with faculty, as well as fresh insights and opportunities.”

Kimberly also thanks the WSU administrators who have worked with ACE along the way, individuals who brought valuable leadership, support, and perspectives to the conversations and efforts for developing assessment, she said.

She is looking forward to a new chapter of her life, spending more time with family and friends, including her daughter and granddaughter in nearby Moscow, and her son and elderly parents in California. She’s hoping for a few adventures too – visiting old friends from her undergraduate exchange year in Bordeaux, France; dusting off projects put on hold such as exploring family history and her great-great-grandfather’s diary; camping and adventuring in the West and Southwest with friends and her yellow lab; and making a return visit to Ghana.

DAESA thanks Kimberly for her countless contributions, and wishes her the very best in many years to come.

News Briefs

In addition to programming noted in DAESA Upcoming Events above, we share the following 2024 news:

January

• The Distinguished Scholarships Program received word that seven applicants for Fulbright U.S. Scholar or Fulbright English Teaching Assistant awards have advanced to the semi-finalist stage.
• Multiple faculty award applications have opened—for Smith Teaching and Learning grants, the Transformational Change Initiative’s (TCI) IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access) grants, three types of WSU Teaching Academy awards, and the Law Award. Deadlines for all are in March.
• The next Common Reading book (for 2024-25) was chosen to be How the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in America. Thanks to support from Provost and Executive Vice President and WSU Pullman Chancellor Elizabeth Chilton, incoming first-year students at the Pullman, Vancouver, Tri-Cities, and Global campuses will receive a book copy, as will faculty planning to use the book in courses. Distribution plans for students and faculty are taking shape.
• The Academic Success and Career Center (ASCC) offered a new grant as an incentive for faculty whose students were encouraged to, and then attended, any of the three Career Expo Madness career fair events in early February. If 40 or more students from a faculty member’s courses signed in, a $500 professional development grant would be awarded. ASCC Associate Director Amanda Morgan said the grants were being test-driven for faculty who appreciate the importance of helping their students build a professional network that includes employers, and to understand the career opportunities available.
• A summer leadership change is in store for the Office of Assessment for Curricular Effectiveness (ACE). When Director Kimberly Green wraps up her work, Assistant Director Lindsey Brown will assume unit leadership.
• The annual, invitation-only Distinguished Scholarships Progression at WSU Pullman offered more than 200 high-achieving first-year students information to expand their success and growth beyond academics. Twenty guest-expert table hosts explained on- and off-campus options to enhance and broaden portfolios and scholarship—helpful to those considering applying for prestigious, nationally competitive scholarships.

February

• Three Career Expo Madness in-person and virtual career fairs welcomed more than 125 employers to discuss internships and jobs with students and alumni. The CASE event on the 13^th focused on communication, arts, science, and education majors. Host of the events is the Academic Success and Career Center (ASCC).
• The Common Reading Program, part of First-Year Programs, hosted a film screening of “Bring Her Home” at 4 p.m. in Smith CUE 202 on the National Day of Action and Awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women USA (MMIW). The 2022 documentary is part of robust programming associated with the current common reading book, Braiding Sweetgrass, the first book to be used for two years. The movie follows three Indigenous women as they fight to vindicate and honor their relatives who have fallen victim to a growing epidemic across Indian country.
• The Common Reading Program will host a presentation from noon-1 p.m. Feb. 22 in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (MOA) at WSU Pullman, titled, “Here in a Homemade Forest: Indigenous Arts Talk.” The presentation by Michael Holloman and Jacy Sohappy will be livestreamed. The speakers will talk about indigenous weaving and beading practices as they relate to artworks and cultural materials currently featured at the museum as part of a year-long Common Reading/MOA collaboration. Visiting artist Sohappy is the traditional arts manager at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts. Holloman is a guest curator.

March

• First-Year Programs and Common Reading Program Director Karen Weathermon will lead a Drop-in Macramé Activity, “Braiding Our Stories,” from 12:30-2:30 p.m. March 1 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at WSU Pullman. Participants in the free event will create a simple macramé key chain that symbolizes the “strands of self you honor and value, while also building connections with others in the WSU community.”