Instructions and Advice to Programs | The Graduate School

Deliverables

October 9, 2026: Draft plan for completing the SPA work.
December 18, 2026: Progress report 1 (details to be provided later)
April 30, 2027: Progress report 2 (details to be provided later)
October 29, 2027: College internal deadline for draft report. The intent is for programs to have time to incorporate feedback into the final submission.
November 30, 2027: The final report consisting of three key items listed below will be submitted using this link.

A signed letter confirming you have completed the program maintenance checklist. Please answer each question on the checklist individually, including specifying how you engaged stakeholders in the creation and dissemination of the report.
Copies of the document templates requested in the program maintenance checklist document.
Self-study narrative. The main narrative of the self-study should be paginated and self-contained. It should be structured like the self-study questions using similar section titles and questions answered in the same order within sections. Please consider using the provided SPA report template. As you describe characteristics about your program such as application, enrollment, retention, graduation, and placement statistics, include the data that backs up these characteristics in the narrative. Appendices with additional information (not included in the main narrative) are welcome.

Key Meetings and Workshops

August 19, 2026: Kickoff meeting
September 2, 2026 and September 9, 2026: Planning workshops to help develop plans
September 10, 2026 and September 14, 2026: Data workshops to orient you to provided data
October 2026: Meetings to review provided data with the Graduate School

Instructions

This self-study should not be completed solely by the Graduate Program Director. Based on results from an external evaluation of SPA, the best reports are developed when others such as your graduate committees are partners in developing the self-study. Ideally, you should initially meet with your chair or program director and then determine how you will involve your graduate committee, faculty, graduate program staff, and graduate students as appropriate. Plans for completing the self-study are the first deliverable due on October 9.
We are providing you with a range of data. Please review the data carefully and report any potential errors/omissions as soon as possible to Graduate School data scientist Ifeoma Iyioke. Associate Dean Torng will schedule meetings for October to review each programs’ data. We will use this meeting to discuss any data concerns and collaboratively identify trends worthy of further exploration.
Please watch Teams for all communications. Many resources including this document, links to forms, video recordings of meetings/workshops will also be stored here.
The most important aspect of the self-study is the final “Looking Forward” section. This section contains your self-identified priorities looking ahead to the next 5-10 years.
The earlier sections of the self-study will help you identify what these priorities might be. Several of the sections represent a continuous quality improvement cycle in which you define goals, describe what you’re doing to meet them, and then compare your actual data to your goals to see where you are meeting them. Any places where you are not meeting your goals represent possible goals/priorities looking forward. You may also have new goals if you have met your current ones. In some cases, you may not have existing goals. One outcome of this assessment might be defining goals moving forward.
As you work on the self-study, you may discover that different questions might help you better assess your program. Feel free to reach out to the Graduate School if you wish to propose modifying or replacing any of the questions. Likewise, some questions may not be relevant to your program. If a specific question is not applicable, you do not need to provide a long response for that question. If appropriate, “Not applicable” is an acceptable answer.
Provide evidence (quantitative/qualitative/mixed) to support any claims. We recognize you do not have the resources to assess everything, but some assessment, especially for key findings, will strengthen the self-study. You can use your own data sources and collect additional evidence during your self-study. Please cite data sources so we know which sources are useful.

Rubric and Feedback

All self-studies will be evaluated using a rubric which is provided in a separate document. AI platforms will be used to generate a draft scoring of your self-study against the rubric followed by human review and editing before a final feedback document is completed. The Graduate School will then meet with your GAAD to discuss all the programs in your college undertaking SPA this year.
Meetings will be set to discuss both college and Graduate School Feedback.
The Graduate School will retain a copy of your full SPA report that may be provided, as needed, as part of the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) accreditation process.

Advice

Feel free to use generative AI platforms in accordance with MSU guidelines.
You may wish to form a peer learning group to work on your self-study with programs also completing theirs.
If a question requests information that is better presented in a response to a different question, refer readers to that other response; reprise information only if it aids understanding in a new response context.
Finally, you may want to look over all the questions to see how the various sections connect.