OFFICE OF THE DEAN, DIVISION OF UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION

June 16, 2025

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MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMIC SENATE, SAN DIEGO DIVISION

ADDITIONAL CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Assessment for Advancing Equity Learning Community

We are pleased to announce an additional call for proposals for the 2025–2027 Assessment for Advancing Equity Learning Community (ALC) Program. The deadline has been extended to August 1, 2025. In response to the strong interest, we are extending the call in hopes of welcoming a few more departments into the community.

Six academic units have already been accepted into this fall’s cohort:

  • Cell and Developmental Biology
  • Eighth College
  • Political Science
  • Scripps Institution of Oceanography
  • Chemistry and Biochemistry
  • Marshall College

Many of these projects focus on course-level assessment of equity in student learning. They aim to explore how well students are meeting course learning outcomes, how instructional practices and assessments may support or hinder that learning, and what structural or curricular factors might be contributing to equity gaps.  If you are interested in doing a similar project in your department, we hope you will submit a proposal to join the community.  The submission instructions can be found below.

Overview:
Curriculum-based assessment offers a powerful lever for advancing equity in the major. This method of self-study shifts focus away from student performance and onto the effectiveness of our course and program designs. By collecting and disaggregating outcomes data, this type of assessment allows us to ask how effective the program is not only on average, but also specifically for students of distinct racial, economic, social, and educational backgrounds. Promoting student success and addressing equity gaps is vital to campus growth, and we hope that units take advantage of this assessment platform that has been put in place.  

We invite faculty to submit proposals to join the Assessment Learning Community to support their assessment efforts. Faculty who participate in the community will receive the following benefits: 

  • Access to your departmental data dashboards. 
  • Credit for university service. 
  • Designation as an Equity-Minded Assessment Fellow. 
  • Support from Institutional Research, the Teaching and Learning Commons, the Division of Undergraduate Education, and the Assessment Learning Community as you work through your project.  
  • Connection to a network of faculty dedicated to advancing equitable teaching and assessment through shared learning and collaboration. 

In addition to these benefits, work done through the Assessment Learning Community contributes to departmental program review and accountability reporting, as well as discipline-specific and campus-wide accreditation. These contributions can be included in academic files.

Learning Community Timeline: 
The Assessment Learning Community will start with a short orientation in the fall quarter and will continue through the 2025-26 and 2026-27 academic years. 

Submission Details: 
To join the Assessment Learning Community, units need to do the following:

  • Complete data training 
  • Submit an assessment proposal. 
  • Note that we no longer ask for a letter from the department chair. Instead, the proposal submission page will ask you to attest that your department chair is supportive of your proposal.

The application offers two “pre-packaged” template proposals:

  1. Course-Level Assessment of Equity in Student Learning and
  2. Curriculum Assessment and Reform for Equity of Outcomes

Units wishing to pursue an assessment project in these areas may customize and submit this pre-packaged proposal instead of developing a project and a proposal from scratch. For more details see this document.

For additional guidance on the application and awardee expectations, please visit the Assessment for Advancing Equity site.

Proposal Guidelines: 
The proposal submission form gives details on what information is required. Proposals should clearly describe how assessing learning within the curriculum will serve to inform questions of equity in student outcomes and experience. The proposal should also describe how the findings will be used to introduce change to interrupt patterns of inequity.

John Moore 
Dean, Division of Undergraduate Education 

David Ruiter 
Faculty Director, Teaching and Learning Commons 

University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA, 92093