Teagle Assessment Scholar Program

In 2006, with the generous support of the Teagle Foundation, the Center of Inquiry established the Teagle Assessment Scholar Program.

The Teagle Scholar Program identifies and develops people who have the knowledge, technical skills, social prowess, and political savvy necessary to help colleges and universities use evidence to strengthen the impact of liberal arts education for students. Teagle Scholars support assessment both at their home institutions and at other colleges and universities across the country.     

Teagle Assessment Scholar Program Core Values

• Teagle Assessment Scholars work to support the missions and students of the institutions with which they collaborate.
• The Teagle Assessment Scholar Program is founded on the idea that colleges and universities can work in collaboration in the larger enterprise of strengthening the impact of liberal arts education for all students.
• Teagle Assessment Scholars do not just consult; they also seek to build capacity at the campuses with which they work.
• The success of the Teagle Assessment Scholar program should be judged by the extent to which it helps institutions improve student learning.

What do Teagle Scholars do?

Teagle Scholars collaborate with faculty, staff, and students to use evidence to improve student learning by participating in site visits to institutions and by helping to facilitate multi-institution workshops.

Many institutions assess student learning, but few institutions use that evidence to make changes that advance student learning. Teagle Assessment Scholars help institutions become better at moving from gathering evidence about student learning to using that evidence to make improvements.

By virtue of increasing accreditation standards and the hard work of foundations and higher education organizations, most colleges and universities now routinely gather evidence on their impact. Unfortunately, the abundance of evidence documented in our accreditation reports has not readily translated into an abundance of improvement. One reason why assessment evidence doesn't readily yield institutional improvement is that institutional governance structures, reward systems, and faculty and staff incentive structures—which began their evolution decades ago—are neither organized for nor experienced with using evidence. Indeed, assessment evidence can often be viewed as subverting the explicit and implicit goals of these structures. Teagle Assessment Scholars work to understand not only the campus's assessment evidence but also the processes and values that govern that campus, and they then collaborate with staff, faculty, and students to find suitable campus pathways for using evidence for improving student learning.

The Teagle Assessment Scholar's approach

Teagle Assessment Scholars work as applied anthropologists/political scientists/sociologists who focus on developing an understanding of a campus's culture, values, politics, governance structures, and history so that they can help a campus identify ways of using evidence to improve student learning. Teagle Assessment Scholars immerse themselves in the campus's evidence on student learning and the teaching practices and conditions that promote student learning, and they then collaborate with campus constituencies to identify pathways consistent with campus culture, resources, and politics for using that evidence for change. The experience of the Teagle Assessment Scholars is that evidence about student learning will point to many different directions for improvement, but that only a subset of these are realistically possible. Teagle Assessment Scholars bring experience and perspectives that allow them to help campuses move from the possible to the doable.

Who are the Scholars?

For a list of current Teagle Assessment Scholars and Scholars in the Development Program, click here.

How to become a Teagle Scholar

There are three ways to become a Teagle Assessment Scholar: two for people who have significant experience with assessment and one for people who are relatively new to assessment. Click here to learn more.