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Assessment requirements often raise great concerns among departments and faculty: fear of loss of autonomy, distraction from primary departmental goals, and the creation of alien and artificial external standards. This article demonstrates how one political science department directly responded to their own unique circumstances in assessing their current program in order to effect improvement. We suggest that assessment does not have to be a long and arduous process but can be relatively painless for the department and produce numerous benefits that go beyond the actual planning and engaging in assessment. This case study identifies ways to turn assessment from an external chore to an internal quest for information that provides answers to important departmental questions. It also identifies the ongoing nature of assessment and the way the lessons learned influences future decision making. By demonstrating how the department interpreted the collected data and evaluated its own performance, this case study reveals the frequently private process of assessment in a concrete fashion. With adaptation to the culture and norms of specific departments, this model and rationale can easily be modified for implementation at other institutions. (Contains 1 note.)

The Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy is a coalition of friends who share a vision of the potential of education. Founded in 1997 at a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers, the Hamer Institute conducts seminars and workshops for K-12 teachers and students that feature the role played by the Civil Rights Movement in expanding the meaning, scope, and practice of citizenship and democracy in America. The summer seminars are designed to introduce secondary school students and educators to the valuable and remarkable achievements of the Civil Rights Movement and the last 20 years of scholarship on citizenship and democracy. The Hamer Institute is committed to transforming the curriculum of primary and secondary schools to highlight the role played by the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Students must learn that history is made in all places and by all kinds of people. The authors also strongly advocate the use of interactive teaching techniques and they maintain that the use of primary sources in teaching is essential for learning. As a result of these techniques, the participants are actively engaged in the construction of democracy while they simultaneously transform the ways they teach. In this article, the authors describe the curriculum and pedagogy of the Hamer Institute.

The assessment literature frequently ignores the quandary of the department resistant to assessment in its discussion of implementing departmental plans and instead focuses on idealized implementation processes. The approach articulated in this article builds on the assessment literature, generating the hypothesis that a grassroots approach to assessment for these resistant departments would be more successful than the traditional mission-driven model. Effective, simple course assessment techniques can easily become the core of a comprehensive departmental assessment plan. Building on successful classroom assessment pedagogy, a department articulates a shared objective and creates a simple, nonthreatening assessment process that could pave the way for more integrated assessment approaches. Peer evaluation, the process of having students evaluate the work of their colleagues according to previously established guidelines, is one such classroom device. By asking similar questions of students at different points in their career, comparing their responses, and making changes, faculty can begin assessing departmental progress toward goals while improving student learning.

A survey of midwestern and southern institutions of higher education is conducted to see how they have implemented the Supreme Court's ruling in two different cases of Gratz and Grutter regarding affirmative action. Results reveal that southern universities do not consider race in admissions decisions but midwestern universities utilize race to assemble student body in response to the ruling.

Questions are fielded to experienced teachers to find out how to go about getting a job in a teaching institution and then succeeding. The list of frequently asked questions and answers have been framed after interviewing, hiring, mentoring and evaluating colleagues in a range of liberal arts colleges.

According to Amy R. Gershkoff, the APSA conference on Teaching was more a conference on teaching and learning. Michelle D. Deardorff found that the conference was not directed by faculty but gave an opportunity to the participants to discuss the same topics with people sharing the same disciplinary perspective.

Assessment can improve the way a department works if its findings inform future departmental decisions and encourage faculty to ensure that their work benefits their programs. A few suggestions on how departmental chairs can make mandated assessment plans more meaningful are presented.