I think I first read about Wabash College in a course during my Master’s program called “American College Student.” I was immediately interested as Wabash is a single-gender liberal arts college for men. I am fascinated by the effects of single-gender education on students and hope to some day spend time as an administrator, faculty member, or researcher at a women’s college. Maybe I can at least do some research on/for a women’s college…
Anyway, Wabash caught my eye again today in the Chronicle of Higher Education because of a new study the college’s Center of Inquiry is working on with 30 college and universities. According to the Center’s website:
“The goal is for institutions to use evidence to identify an area of student learning or experience that they wish to improve, and then to create, implement, and assess changes designed to improve those areas. The study is designed to create a deliberative process for using evidence that an institution can build on for improvements in student learning. This includes building institutional capacity and infrastructure that can support successful assessment efforts after the study is completed. While each institution will focus on improving areas that are relevant to that institution, faculty, staff, and administrators from these institutions will collaborate during the course of the study as a community of practice, sharing information, approaches, problem-solving strategies, and lessons learned.”
Hooray! Hooray, I say as a neophyte institutional researcher! I recently read a report by Jillian Kinzie (2010) from the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment which discussed (among other issues) the need to create a culture of outcomes assessment on campuses and to engage faculty more actively in this process. It seems the Wabash Study 2010 endeavors to do just that. Institutions are asked to use data they are already collecting in a variety of forms to create assessment portfolios of survey data and student work; both quantitative and qualitative assessments 
This seems like a fantastic action research type of inquiry, so kudos to the institutions who have committed to this project, but as a 3 year project we’ll be waiting a while for the outcomes of this new process of outcomes assessment. (Did I use the word “outcomes” enough?)
For more information see: http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/wabash-study-2010-overview/
