Assessment is increasingly present on many campuses, and as state legislatures, parents, employers, and accreditation agencies continue to ask for documentation of what students learn at college, it is not likely to go away in the near future. How, then, do we know what our students learn? How can we demonstrate that they do learn, and what they learn?

Assessment of undergraduate programs is perhaps most difficult when a department's identity is centered on graduate education and research. How can department chairs charged with undergraduate program assessment in a university culture that emphasizes research and graduate education over teaching undergraduates convince faculty that assessment is a useful exercise rather than just an additional chore that eats into departmental resources? I suggest there are at least four ways in which assessment can have positive aspects for a department even when the departmental focus is not on undergraduate teaching:

1. If one of the goals of the undergraduate program is to enhance its reputation by sending its best students to prestigious graduate programs, assessment could promote this goal by producing systematic placement data. These data could not just be used to recruit and attract new outstanding undergraduates, but also as a first step to assess how more graduating majors could be sent to first-rate graduate programs.
2. Oftentimes, faculty members under research pressure rely on graduate students to assist with research tasks. Departmental assessment could help identify ways to enhance undergraduates' research skills, thus providing them with an overall better education in their major, and enabling them to provide additional assistance to either the professors themselves or work in teams with graduate students. This research experience would not just benefit the professors, but might also increase the students' competitive edge for gaining acceptance into top graduate programs.
3. If program assessment relies partially on classroom assessment, professors would benefit from an incentive to analyze what students learned in their undergraduate classes. Giving some credit to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) according to the teacher-scholar model, where research on student learning in the classroom is assessed systematically and published in peer-reviewed journals, might provide this incentive and also assist new faculty members in pursuing tenure and promotion.
4. Annual assessment data and documentation on how departments have pursued improvement of the program are useful when the department is going through the periodic program review cycle in place in many colleges and universities. These data can often be used and included in larger periodic program reviews.

The bottom line is that assessment of an undergraduate program can be beneficial not just to undergraduate education itself, but can also support other departmental goals if it is viewed as an integral part of the overall departmental mission.

In sum, while assessment of undergraduate programs can be conducted in many different ways without incurring prohibitive costs or taking up too much of faculty members' time, it is important that the goals of assessment meet the overall departmental mission or objectives. Thus, defining the assessment goals of the undergraduate program in line with a department's emphasis on graduate education and research could enhance the department's identity rather than distract from its focus. On the other hand, if undergraduate education is a primary goal of the department, that would, of course, also be reflected in the underlying objectives of assessment. My point here is simply that assessment of an undergraduate program can benefit departments even if undergraduate education is not a primary focus.

Furthermore, as undergraduate program assessment is used by higher administration to assess departments rather than students, it is useful to keep a few things in mind when defining objectives for assessment:

• It is generally useful to target the areas that are particularly important to your program, where you can show what your program does, and maybe identify how this can be done even better.
• It might also be useful to emphasize the significance of the discipline within college education. When resources are scarce, administration sometimes looks to identify programs of low priority. Thus, it is important to demonstrate the contribution of your program to the university and society at large. In other words, what does your program do, or do better, than other programs or disciplines in your college or university?

Another important consideration relates to the resources needed to conduct meaningful assessment. Some questions to ask when planning assessment include, for example:

• What will be the cost? Will there be resources available from sources outside the department or will the department need to pay all expenses?
• Who will oversee and conduct the assessment process? Will there be compensation or rewards for faculty who spend time on departmental or program assessment?

If additional resources for assessment are limited, some low-cost options include:

• Using existing data: Many colleges and universities have assessment offices that can make useful data available to programs, such as student demographics, enrollment patterns, graduation rates, or future career plans. Often, these offices also administer exit surveys to graduating seniors. It might be possible for departments to add program-specific questions at no extra cost.
• Using student work that is already available, such as projects from capstone courses, research projects, term papers, etc., to assess what students have learned.
• Especially in large programs, using samples of students might be easier than attempting to collect data from all students. This can also be a good alternative if nationally normed reference tests, such as the ETS Field Test, are used. Using samples allows for keeping the costs for these tests down.
• Encourage faculty members to assess their courses by giving credit for SoTL articles for promotion and tenure and research records; course assessment can then be built into the program assessment plan.
• Online courses provide a wealth of data stored in electronic format, e.g., discussions, quizzes, student participation (engagement).

In sum, regardless of whether the assessment process is done as a compliance exercise or primarily driven by the department and the faculty, it can—and should—be useful to the department and to the educational endeavor. Assessment should demonstrate student learning knowledge and skill development, and identify a roadmap of how to improve learner outcomes in the future.