Wright State University
Welcome to Wright State University's Student Success Plan!
| Wright State University |
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| http://www.wright.edu | ||
| Joe Law | ||
| joe.law@wright.edu |
Welcome to Wright State University's Student Success Plan!
| Wright State University |
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| http://www.wright.edu | ||
| Joe Law | ||
| joe.law@wright.edu |
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The First Year Experience (FYE) is a wealth of opportunities provided by many dedicated faculty, staff and students who are committed to helping new students through this learning process. The first year of college is a significant life transition for students. During this period students make new friendships, form study habits, experience increased personal independence and begin their first interaction with faculty. Early components of the First Year Experience include the Summer On-Campus Advising and Registration (SOAR), First Weekend, Freshman Convocation, Learning Communities, as well as numerous Student Life, Residence Life and Campus Recreation programs.
Nationally recognized FYE integrates behavioral and developmental goals to help students:
Successes with our Learning Communities program:
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WSU Professionally Accredited Programs
Active promotion of accreditation reinforces our mission:
Over a dozen undergraduate programs with professional accreditation by the following groups:
Wright State University's Athletics Program is also fully accredited by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). |
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The primary mission of the Honors Program is to produce a body of graduates who are well-educated, socially conscious, and capable of assuming leadership roles in society. Serving about 900 students each year, the Honors Program is responsible for providing undergraduates with all the tools and every opportunity to create a stimulating, well-rounded, solidly grounded, and socially responsible education. The program currently has approximately 1,500 alumni, disproportionately distributed in the medical, legal, and academic professions, where many of them are beginning to move into leadership roles. Alumni surveys indicate that the program is fulfilling its mission.
The Wright State University Honors Program was created in 1972 to meet the needs of the University's brightest, most ambitious students. It is open to students of all majors and provides a varied curriculum consisting of:
Departments offer Honors sections of regular courses both at the introductory and advanced level. First-year students are able to participate in learning communities of linked courses in which the same 20 students enroll. Most majors offer students the opportunity for intense Honors work in the major during the senior year.
Students may choose to graduate with one of three Honors designations, which are noted on the transcript and in the commencement program:
Independent Research
Independent Research is featured in most Honors options in the major. The method and content of Honors projects vary from department to department. In the fine arts, students often do creative, performance-based projects, while in the sciences they work in labs. Students in the humanities or social sciences may also do creative projects or more traditional research papers. Some departments allow students to integrate internships or other field experiences into their Honors work.
Honors students work closely with faculty advisors to produce projects, gaining excellent preparation for graduate or professional school and enhancing portfolios that graduates can present to prospective employers. Some research funds are available to support this work. Each spring the University Honors Program hosts a Research Colloquium to showcase student Honors projects. Cash prizes are awarded to the best projects in various categories.
Honors Institute
Each spring, the Honors program sponsors the Honors Institute, a multi-track learning experience that includes a provocative community event. Its purpose is to prepare Honors students to think beyond their academic training and to make it a habit of incorporating this training into larger, humanistic considerations of the common good. Focusing each year on a different contemporary intellectual issue of ethical importance, the Institute consists of:
In 2007 the topic was Poverty and Society, with keynote speaker Wangari Maathai and lunch speaker Tony P. Hall. Additional information is available at
http://www.wright.edu/academics/honors/institute/2007/about.html#1.
National Scholarships
Honors Program students are national scholarship recipients:
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Wright State students exceed national average pass rates on many key exams:
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Raj Soin College of Business students
Other Wright State students have
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The General Education Program is required of all students and serves as a foundation upon which all baccalaureate programs are built. A bachelor’s degree awarded by a university implies more than career preparation or specialized technical competency. A university education should be broadly based in order to promote intellectual growth, cultivate critical examination and informed understanding, encourage breadth and flexibility of perspective, and provide students an opportunity to develop skills and knowledge that will form the basis for their life-long learning. Accordingly, the General Education program at Wright State University is a planned and coherent program that is designed to help students:
To realize these overarching goals, the General Education program is divided into six sub areas, each with its own earning outcomes:
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The General Education (GE) program takes its current form in direct response to assessment findings. Ongoing GE assessment in the 1990s confirmed earlier findings that many classes were too large, that student success was impeded by rigid course requirements, that the assessment of student learning outcomes was problematic, and that students needed more individualized instruction in writing. These findings led to a 1998 plan to reform general education around areas of intellectual competency, with skills and abilities defined in learning outcomes for each of six areas of GE. The new program provides more choices in most areas, making it possible to offer smaller sections and more writing-intensive sections as well. Once the plan was approved, departments and colleges revised and rewrote the syllabuses for all GE courses to make them consistent with the stated student learning outcomes for each area and with the overall goals of the GE program. When the new program was implemented in 2003, the University General Education Committee was charged with developing a new assessment plan that would address each of the six areas of the program. That plan has been implemented, and assessment findings are continuing to (re)shape Wright State’s GE program. |
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The General Education Assessment Plan (consisting of overall and area plans) is available on Wright State University's Assessment home page: http://www.wright.edu/assessment/bpra/outcomes/gened.html
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The assessments of General Education that are tied to the above plans are also available online:
For courses in the major, the following example from English is but one of many such assessment plans across the university. For other majors, please see http://www.wright.edu/assessment/bpra/outcomes/plans.html.
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| ENGLISH | |
All students taking a B. A. in English should be
Students in the Literature Concentration should also be
Students in the Creative Writing Concentration should also be
Students in the Professional Writing Concentration should also be
Students in the TESOL Concentration should also be
Students in the Integrated Language Arts Concentration should also be
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Achievement of the above learning outcomes are measured in the following ways:
Review of culminating papers: each year, five culminating papers, together with the corresponding assignment, are randomly selected from each of two sections of 400-level literature classes (one in fall, one in winter) and from ONE of the following courses or sets of courses:
The papers from the 400-level literature classes are assessed for the general outcomes expected of all students. The papers from the courses listed in bullets are evaluated to determine the degree to which they meet the specific learning outcomes of each concentration. All program outcomes will be assessed in this way.
Exit survey: each graduating senior is given a survey and a postage-paid envelope. These are collected, sorted, and stored until needed for assessment. Students on the survey are asked to identify their concentration. They are asked to comment on aspects of the program. Over time, the survey may be refined. As of now, it serves as an indirect tool for assessing the first outcome for each concentration, the outcome relating to knowledge.
Focus groups: each spring, the department sponsors a focus group of students in one of the concentrations. The focus groupis led by a faculty member not primarily responsible for teaching courses in the concentration being evaluated. Questions in the focus group focus on the outcomes for the concentration being evaluated, primarily on students’ perception of the second outcome, the outcome relating to performance and writing.
The department faculty holds a retreat each spring or fall quarter for the purpose of evaluating the assessment data gathered during the current calendar year.
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Department of English: Assessment of Undergraduate Program
Rubrics for evaluating undergraduate writing The excellent undergraduate paper will meet the standards described in all of these categories:
CONTENT
The central idea will be clearly defined and developed with originality and careful thought, supported substantially and concretely. When a paper from a literature class is being assessed for general program assessment purposes, it should present an effective and persuasive reading of a text or texts based on knowledge of literary historical contexts and of basic critical strategies.
Work being assessed for the concentration in literature should show the students’ genuine familiarity with works in the Anglo-American literary tradition and/or other literatures written in English; the student should also be very familiar with and skillful in the use the terms of literary analysis.
Work being assessed for the concentration in creative writing should show the students’ genuine familiarity with the discipline of creative writing and with the value of criticism in the creative process, as well as the ability to write in their specific chosen creative forms.
Work being assessed for the concentration in professional writing should show the students’ genuine familiarity with the genres of professional writing and with the primary writing conventions and skills needed in several fields, as well as the ability to create and edit appropriate professional and/or technical documents.
Work being assessed for the concentration in TESOL should show the students’ genuine familiarity with the nature of language, the structure of English, and the fundamentals of language teaching, as well as the ability to develop a classroom pedagogy informed by their understanding of language.
Work being assessed for the concentration in Integrated Language Arts should show the students’ genuine familiarity with the fundamentals of teaching language arts at the high school and middle school levels, as well as the ability to develop an approach to language arts teaching informed by their understanding of literature and language.
MECHANICS |