The Big Picture

Program Review is a faculty responsibility and purview. Required initially by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), Miramar College has approached program review as an opportunity for faculty to review their program for the purposes of improvement. This means that faculty use the process of program review to inform planning decisions and discussions related to program development, expansion, and revision. In practices, program review reports are the guiding documents for decisions at the school level, as well as an essential and required component of all requests to College Governance committees.

Conducting the Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Cycle (SLOAC)—also an ACCJC requirement—is the foundation for program review. Since instruction and student learning are the reason for all campus efforts and the goal of every program, a review of actual learning outcomes at the institutional, program, and course levels are some of the best indicators of program success and/or needs.  For this reason, Miramar College integrated program review and SLOAC into a single, seamless process with the objective of creating a campus-wide culture of continuous improvement.  In support of this process, the initial SLOAC core principles have become the guidelines for program review as well. The process is:

• Faculty driven
• Based on Collaborative discussion and collective agreement
• Cyclical and ongoing
• Focused on campus-wide improvement for both teaching and learning
• Supportive of academic freedom

To accommodate the timelines for college and committee discussion, program review takes two forms: (1) the annual update completed by all programs and (2) the comprehensive Program Review completed by one-third of the programs every three years. SLOAC reports are part of each of these reviews. In addition, each program provides course SLOAC midterm reports in fall and spring and a program SLOAC progress report in spring. Institutional SLOAC progress reports are presented by the SLOAC Coordinator to Academic Affairs in the spring semester.

The program review/SLOAC process and reports incorporate qualitative analyses, quantitative data, and the results of student learning outcomes in order to:

• Promote and serve a mechanism for enhancing professionalism
• Recognize good performance and academic excellence
• Identify areas of potential growth
• Initiate instructional and service improvement
• Update programs and services
• Stimulate self-renewal and self-study

This process leads to better:

• Utilization of resources
• Planning for growth, new courses, and/or needed curriculum shifts
• Accreditation reporting
• Budget decisions
• Student access and equity
• Student learning and success