Biology and Marine Biology

(Axel Boer) #1

Link to UNCW Learning
Goals: thoughtful
expression.


departmental faculty
members after the seminar.

mastery of research,
professional poise and
ability to answer questions
are collected.

lower levels for mastery of
research and ability to
answer questions (54% for
both). In the 2009- 2010
year, we had no
assessments to report.
However, in 2008-2009 our
students demonstrated
higher levels of
performance with
performance >90% for all
parts of this SLO. However
the 2010-2011 data need to
be viewed with caution
because of the small sample
size – all faculty at a seminar
assess the student, and we
had only n=13 respondents
in 2010-2011. We feel that
given the nature of this
assessment tool, a greater
number of responses is
required to fully evaluate
student performance on this
SLO.

performance of our
students on this SLO over
several years, and with
greater numbers, before
making any changes to our
program.

SLO 4: A graduate student
should be able to write up
his or her research in the
form of multiple
manuscripts for publication
in scientific journals. Link to
UNCW Learning Goals:
thoughtful expression,
information literacy, critical
thinking) and inquiry.


Multi-chaptered
dissertation is successfully
completed. The student’s
committee evaluates the
quality of the dissertation
with a form.

Each student in the program
is assessed by each of
his/her committee
members. Data on the
quality of the writing,
mastery of the research,
and likelihood of being
published in a peer-review
journal are collected. In an
effort to better understand
how successful our students
are at publishing their work,
we recently added two
assessment questions to

In 2010-2011 we had only 3
responses for this SLO. Our
students were assessed as
performing at only 67% on
dissertation quality, mastery
of research, and likelihood
of publication. In addition,
submission and publication
of manuscripts were at level


  1. In the 2009-2010 year,
    no PhD students defended
    their dissertations.
    Performance on this SLO
    was higher in 2008-2009,


Results were discussed at
the Faculty retreat in
August. We will continue to
collect data on this SLO in
2011 - 2012 and monitor the
performance of our
students on this SLO over
several years, and with
greater numbers, before
making any changes to our
program.
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