At Kuyper College, we are committed to providing an excellent education. In an effort to maintain a high level of educational achievement, we have developed five student learning outcomes for all our students. Our Plan for the Assessment of Student Learning not only helps measure progress on those SLOs, but also helps ensure that we are serving our students while using our resources wisely. Our goal is to show, quantitatively and qualitatively, the effect of our efforts on our students, and their skill level as it relates to our SLOs. As a result, we utilize several different methods of assessment to give us broad inputs through which we can assess our effectiveness, make learned recommendations for improvements, and measure the results.
When students graduate from Kuyper College, we want to know that their education has been worthwhile in equipping them with the skills to serve effectively in Christ's world. For those reasons, we use several forms of assessment instruments to fulfill the mandate of our assessment plan. These measures include locally-developed instruments and assessment, norm-referenced (standardized) instruments, and measures of student satisfaction and priority.
Members of the faculty have developed local instruments for measuring the progress of our students on institutional goals. These include our Bible Knowledge Test, Doctrine Knowledge Test, and Information Literacy test. In addition, each year the faculty and staff of the college gather during a week in June to assess progress on our SLOs, led by the Assessment Committee and the academic departments. Another type of assessment instrument is norm-referenced measures of academic achievement that we administer on a rotating basis. Kuyper College gives the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency (CAAP) and the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress (MAPP) to incoming freshmen and juniors to provide the college with a "pre-post" snapshot of our students, guide our academic programming and areas of emphasis, and compare ourselves to national peers. A final form of assessment comes from the administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) which are administered (on a rotating basis) to the student body as a whole. These instruments allow us another form of comparison to other colleges and universities across the country and give us insight into how our students spend the their time, what they feel is important, and how they perceive various areas of the college. Additionally, the College Student Inventory (CSI) is given to incoming students to assist in retention efforts.
In October 2005, Kuyper College became only the second Bible-centric college in the nation to earn the right to grant a Bachelor of Social Work (B.S.W.) degree accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). This accreditation is a testament to Kuyper’s firm commitment and strict adherence to non-discriminatory and generalist social work practices. Being accreddited by the CSWE involves posting assessment findings for the accreddited programs.
Kuyper College's Social Work Program Assessment
If you have questions about Kuyper College's B.S.W. accreditation or assessment findings, please contact Professor Greg Scott through email or (616) 988-3667.