After over a decade of working to improve undergraduate programs across WSU, the Office of Assessment for Curricular Effectiveness director is calling it a career.
ACE director Kimberly Green started as the director in 2011 when it was the Center for Teaching and Learning. Green is retiring from her role after 13 years of supporting every department at WSU to ensure faculty can assess student learning through exams and curriculums.
“It’s this big picture thinking, and it’s really helping faculty reflect on their curriculum,” she said. “Students get to give input through course evaluations…so it’s really trying to figure out how we can help the faculty in different departments.”
Green said the program has a reporting process and has always tried to prioritize doing meaningful assessments that are going to support good quality undergraduate programs.
“I think we’ve got an annual reporting process that’s working pretty well, and I think we’ve supported a lot of different kinds of assessments, so I’m proud of that,” she said.
Green said she has enjoyed working with faculty members from different departments and seeing what excites them and what they care about most.
“It’s all so different and it’s been interesting,” she said. “It just makes me appreciate that students can go in so many different directions.”
William Davis, Office of the Provost academic engagement and student achievement interim vice provost, said Green has built an exemplary model for how to work with degree program assessment at the undergraduate level.
Davis said he has spoken with people at other institutions about what WSU’s infrastructure looks like and the level of engagement with undergraduate programs at the university, and people are impressed with the robust and user-friendly system Green has worked on.
“Kimberly is one of those hidden gems at the university,” he said. “She doesn’t always have a forward facing day-to-day impact and relationship with many people at the institution, but her work impacts every student in every program on every campus at this institution in some way, shape or form.”
Green will be retiring from her position in July, and ACE Assistant Director Lindsey Brown will take over her role.
Brown said when she initially takes over the role this summer, she wants to keep the train running on its tracks during the transition as well as continue to support current initiatives and priorities.
She wants to focus on making data accessible within their program, so they can spend less time searching for data, and can utilize their time interpreting the data. She said she has been working with ACE for the past 10 years in multiple different roles and took on her role as the assistant director three years ago.
“My favorite part about working at ACE is definitely the data side. I’m kind of a data nerd,” she said. “I do really enjoy getting the data and turning it into something that makes sense to people and [is] not just a bunch of numbers that don’t have a lot of meaning.”
During her time with ACE, Brown said she has had multiple opportunities to consult with different academic programs on planning, designing and implementing program assessment activities and striving for activities that are meaningful and sustainable.
Brown said she has worked with Green the entire time she has worked at ACE, especially since she took on the role as the assistant director, and the two have closely collaborated on multiple projects.
“She’s been thinking about this transition for a while,” Brown said. “She’s been really helpful with sharing her expertise, knowledge and insights on how to engage with different people across the university.”
Davis said he thinks Brown is ready and prepared to take over as the ACE director.
“She has her own ideas about some things that she would like to do and some experiments to try and ways to hopefully make the process better for everybody who is involved,” he said.
Green said she is excited to have Brown take over her role because of the innovation and practices she has brought to the program.
Brown does a lot of work with the details and logistics of ACE assessments, and Green said she does a great job in that area.
“I think Lindsey is going to bring a real forward-looking vision and go in a lot of new directions,” Brown said. “I think there’s a lot of good growth in the future, and I’m delighted that Lindsey’s going to move into the director role.”
