1. The visiting team offers several suggestions regarding diversity:

   1. The university is encouraged to take a leadership role in initiating activities with the city of Springfield and other major area employers to create a more welcoming climate for minorities.

   2. The Office of Affirmative Action is currently within Human Resources, reporting to the Vice President for Administrative Services. For greater recognition of the importance of this function, and for maximum accountability, the university should consider having it report directly to the President.

   3. The University should add a multicultural curricular component to the General Education to provide common knowledge and understandings for students.

   4. Given that the University produces more teachers in Missouri than any other institution and that the classrooms of the future will be highly diverse, the College of Education should consider adding a component to the professional education curriculum that specifically addresses multicultural, gender fair, and disability sensitive needs in the classroom.

   5. University programming should invite more minority cultural performing groups and speakers of note.

   6. Faculty, staff, and administrative searches should be stopped and reopened when there is not evidence of representative applicant pools.

2. The visiting team offers several suggestions regarding assessment:

   1. Departments could be encouraged in the use of multiple measures in order to provide a wider range of assessment results, and to be able to develop measures which relate more specifically to the goals and objectives of their programs.

   2. The annual reports prepared by academic departments should be much more explicit in documenting the improvements made in curricula and instructional programs as a result of analysis of assessment results.

   3. Assessment should be viewed as an integral part of the ongoing processes of program review, planning, and budgeting.

   4. The processes for evaluation and improvement of the assessment program should be clarified.

3. The section for each academic program in the Undergraduate Catalog should begin with a statement of the mission and purpose that not only describes the program, but also relates the department to the university’s broader mission thrusts. These need not be exhaustive, but some concept of the purpose of each program should be presented.

4. The purposes of faculty evaluation as indicated in the Faculty Handbook address only administrative purposes such as merit pay. Although some departments have established their own faculty evaluation system for improvement purposes, there is a need for University efforts to support such activities as peer observation, mentoring, student observation and feedback, and encouragement of co-publishing by new faculty. Such activity would address the responsibility of the University to assist faculty to be successful in their careers. This is particularly important for the new female faculty and faculty of color on whom the institution has expended resources to attract to the university.

5. Student services should be included as a separate category in the student handbook rather than by alphabetical order.

6. Consideration should be made of moving two student support services out of the College of Education and into the University College where similar services are provided. The two services include 1) the function of the Learning Diagnostic Clinic that addresses services to learning disabled (leaving the testing function in the Psychology Department) and 2) Reading 107 which could be offered as a developmental reading course. Reading 107 is delivered by the Coordinator of the Reading and Study Skills Lab located within the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education). Students sometimes need Reading 107 in addition to IDS 110.

7. The Learning Diagnostic Clinic support services should be provided in the summer sessions (the clinic is currently closed in summer but staffed by faculty volunteers).

8. Once there is assurance of funding for graduate programs, a careful staffing and recruiting plan should be developed to facilitate successful hiring in the various new programs and to further affirmative action goals in under-represented areas.

9. A plan should be developed for fund raising priorities in reference to the Themes in the Long Range Plan which would not allow the Foundation debt problem to diminish the extensive fund raising potential for the university.

10. The Development Office should add support staff. Addition of staff would ensure both debt pay-off and successful new fundraising projects, i.e., public affairs building, library additions, etc.

11. The University should address concerns, consistently expressed, relative to space needs in the student support service areas.

12. The student support service areas should develop and administer quality control instruments as well as a comprehensive survey in concert with the educational outcomes assessment initiatives.

13. The Athletic Department should achieve gender equity as outlined in its proposed

1995 Site Visit Report