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CIC ANNOUNCES TEAGLE GRANT FOR CIC/CLA CONSORTIUM; PUBLISHES REPORT ON CONSORTIAL USE OF CLA TO IMPROVE TEACHING AND LEARNING

WASHINGTON, DC — The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) announced today that the Teagle Foundation has awarded to CIC grants totaling $665,714 to expand the work of the CIC/Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) Consortium. The grants extend the Consortium’s work for three years through the spring of 2011 and support an increase of the Consortium’s size from 33 to 47 institutions (see list).

CIC today also released a report on the work of the CIC/CLA Consortium to date in implementing a voluntary way to measure student learning outcomes that is not overly burdensome to colleges. Evidence of Learning: Applying the Collegiate Learning Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning in the Liberal Arts College Experience highlights the efforts of Consortium members to make use of the CLA and describes the challenges faced and “best practices” learned in administering the CLA.

CIC President Richard Ekman said “higher education is stronger today by virtue of the commitment of CIC/CLA Consortium institutions to find a better path to assess student learning. In the effort to create ‘cultures of evidence’ on their own campuses, these institutions are also bringing to light valuable ideas and practices for use by other institutions.”

W. Robert Connor, President of The Teagle Foundation, said “We are delighted to support CIC’s Consortium, which is raising a new level of awareness of and engagement with evidence-based efforts to improve student learning and faculty instruction.” The Carnegie Corporation of New York has also provided early support for the CIC/CLA Consortium to supplement the grants from The Teagle Foundation.

Important lessons have already emerged from the consortial experience, according to the report, including:

• Voluntary approaches to assessment of student learning can work (a government mandate is both undesirable and unnecessary);
• Engagement of faculty members in assessment is essential in efforts to improve and assess student learning;
• CLA results are best interpreted when used in conjunction with other assessment measures, such as the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and portfolio analyses; and
• Campus-wide commitment to assessment of student learning enhances the usefulness and frank consideration of CLA results.

The CLA was created by the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) as the first national standardized instrument to gauge an institution’s “value-added” contribution to student learning. It measures how the college experience helps students develop such higher order skills as thinking critically, reasoning analytically, solving problems, and writing effectively. CIC has collaborated with CAE to implement the CLA since 2002, when CIC was asked to recruit smaller private colleges to test the CLA prototype. Beginning in 2005, CIC and CAE have jointly sponsored annual summer meetings of Consortium representatives to compare results, share successes, and solve problems in using the CLA to assess student learning.

CAE President Roger Benjamin said the partnership with CIC “has given my colleagues and me a unique opportunity to listen and learn from our colleagues at the participating institutions. In particular, the Consortium has helped us understand how to harness the case study approach of the performance tasks which can be used by faculty members to directly help them improve teaching and learning.”

The report is available from CIC either by calling (202) 466-7230 for a hard copy or downloading a PDF here.

More information on the CLA Consortium, as well as a list of Consortium members, is available here on CIC's website.

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The Council of Independent Colleges is an association of more than 600 independent liberal arts colleges and universities and higher education affiliates and organizations that work together to strengthen college and university leadership, sustain high-quality education, and enhance private higher education’s contributions to society. To fulfill this mission, CIC provides its members with skills, tools, and knowledge that address aspects of leadership, financial management and performance, academic quality, and institutional visibility. The Council is headquartered at One Dupont Circle in Washington, DC.

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