Instructions to Colleges

Before the Academic Year

A link to a spreadsheet containing the list of your college’s programs participating in Strategic Program Assessment (SPA) this year is located here. Please contact the Graduate School immediately if any changes need to be made.
For each program undertaking SPA this year, please provide the Graduate School and the program with the following information by August 1 via this form:
- Are there any concerns or issues that you would like the program to address as part of this process?
- Are there any special instructions or additional questions you would like the program to answer in their self-study?
- Will you request an external review for the program? If so, please identify what type of external review will take place and when.
Please review the Instructions and Advice to Programs document. Note especially the following:
- Internal Deadline: Draft self-study reports are due to GAAD’s by October 29, 2027.
- Deadline: The programs’ full self-study reports, including your commentaries, are due to the Graduate School by November 30, 2027.

During the Academic Year

New this year, the Graduate School will be organizing data review meetings with programs this fall, potentially organized by college. We would love if you could attend some of these meetings with your programs.
Consider forming a peer learning group for the programs in your college undertaking SPA this year. This provides a chance for those programs to share best practices and learn from each other. This also provides you with a way to assess their progress throughout the year. At least consider holding a college kickoff meeting which helps set a tone that this is an important activity that you care about.
Watch Teams for communication about SPA. There is the channel within the GAADs team as well as the SPA Team for this academic year.
Please review the Self-Study Questions document. It may be helpful to your programs for the college to create a document that lists some college level activities/initiatives that your programs might reference in their self-studies. This college level document should NOT be an aggregation of program level activities/initiatives. Specific items you may want to address include but are not limited to:
- College level recruiting and admission activities/initiatives (see Question 3)
- College level retention activities/initiatives (see Question 4)
- College level career preparation, professional development, and placement activities/initiatives (see Question 5)
- College level activities/initiatives to support the quality and effectiveness of instruction of graduate students (see Question 16)
- College level activities/initiatives to support the advising and mentoring of graduate students (see Question 17)
- College level activities/initiatives to assess and address the health and wellness of graduate students and/or create community and a sense of belonging (see Question 18)
- College level offerings that address any other priority areas identified by the Program in their optional self-reflection questions

At the End of the Submission Cycle

When reviewing the self-studies submitted by your college’s programs, you will be asked to fill out a final review form addressing the following key points:
- Does the self-study provide an accurate reflection of the program(s)?
- Are there any specific positive elements of the self-study that you wish to highlight? For example, exemplary practices that might be shared with other programs.
- Are there any specific issues/concerns that were not sufficiently addressed in the self-study?
- From your perspective, are the program’s looking forward priorities generally appropriate and well-justified?
- How does the college plan to support the program in reaching those goals?
- What help does the college need, and from whom, to be able to provide that support?
Following submission of all your college’s self-studies, the Graduate School will review the self-studies and your commentaries and then schedule a meeting with you to provide Graduate School feedback for all your programs.
- The Graduate School will prepare an extensive feedback document based on a rubric. AI platforms will be used to generate a draft scoring of each self-study report against the rubric followed by human review and editing before the final feedback document is completed.
- After this meeting, please follow up with each of your programs to convey your feedback and the Graduate School feedback from. If appropriate, the Graduate School would be happy to participate in meetings with your programs.