AbstractThis chapter highlights the roles and impact of assessment in a large multilingual
department, from the experience and perspective of the chairperson. It
argues for the value of useful assessment as a means of reframing the goals of language and culture programs and suggests that a more robust assessment culture
might help languages and literatures to achieve the kind of reform that the
Modern Languages Association called for in its widely discussed 2007 report “Foreign
Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World.” The
approach to assessment outlined here aims to be useful, sustainable, and not too
burdensome for faculty members. How the assessment project was started, how
it has focused on a selected outcome in each assessment cycle, what kind of tools
have been used to collect data, and the ways in which the assessment process can
lead to curricular adjustments are also described. The project has contributed to
building mutual respect and collegiality across the lecturer and research faculty
frontier; has proven to be an incubator of curricular innovation; and has helped
faculty members, both individually and collectively, to become more effective advocates
for the importance of the languages and literatures other than English
within the humanities. Finally, the chapter argues that engaging in assessment
requires engaging with the messy world of higher education as it is and not as we
wish it might be.
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