Self-Study (Narrative & Supporting Materials)

To prepare for the review committee's visit, the chair/director should convene the department/program members to write a self-study (usually ten to twenty pages in length) that will be shared with the deans and the review committee.

Overview

This narrative should assess the strengths, weaknesses, and needs of the department/program and outline a vision for the department/program’s future. It should also consider the place of the department within the context of the larger college community and of this time in history—in particular, its engagement with the college-wide emphasis on inclusive excellence[1] and the need to serve the entirety of the student body. It should provide comprehensive background for the review committee as well as identify key issues for discussion. Typically, a series of meetings is needed to prepare the narrative and to make the best use of the review process. This can begin with a summer working group to discuss the important issues in depth, to review historic data of the department’s/ program’s curriculum and teaching, and to outline the self-study. A draft of the narrative is shared with the associate dean for feedback. The department/program then finalizes the self-study, including the narrative and supporting materials, and submits it to the associate dean, who distributes it to the review committee in advance of the campus visit. The dean’s office also provides the review committee with institutional information, including an institutional preamble, a campus map, and access to the Bowdoin College Catalogue and Academic Handbook.

[1] As stated in the 11/30/2020 email from President Rose and Michael Reed, the current working definition of “inclusive excellence” for Bowdoin College is that developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and now widely accepted in the academy:

Making excellence inclusive is thus an active process through which colleges and universities achieve excellence in learning, teaching, student development, institutional functioning, and engagement in local and global communities. A high-quality, practical liberal education should be the standard of excellence for all students. The action of making excellence inclusive requires that we uncover inequities in student success, identify effective educational practices, and build such practices organically for sustained institutional change. (From Williams et al., “Toward a Model of Inclusive Excellence,” Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2005.)

Narrative

The self-study narrative should provide the department/program’s reflections on and examination of: curriculum, pedagogy, student experience, faculty experience, and future vision. Each section should include efforts toward inclusive excellence broadly and toward diversity, equity, and inclusion more specifically. The narrative should be fully informed by the department/program's historic data on course offerings, enrollments, student demographics, revisions to the academic program, etc. and should be written with the review committee as the primary audience in mind.

Introduction

The narrative's introduction begins with a description of the department/program's conceptual framework, including overarching curricular, pedagogical, and scholarly/artistic goals. It then poses the three to five questions the department/program would like guidance in addressing in each of the following areas: curriculum, pedagogy, student experience, faculty experience, and future vision.

Curriculum

Please begin this section by repeating the three to five questions from the introduction regarding the curriculum. The narrative's curriculum section should address the following items and connect them to the department’s or program’s efforts toward and plans for furthering inclusive excellence:

Goals and rationale for the structure of the curriculum, including diversity-related goals and reflections on student demographic data
Curricular shifts put in place since the last review: impetus for and assessment of changes
Learning goals for students (majors, minors, and non-majors)
Description of the current process for assessing learning goals
Curricular approaches to differences in student academic preparation
Role of independent studies and honors work
Description of courses that serve broader college needs, including college-wide distribution requirements
Curricular relationships with other departments/programs (i.e., cross-listed courses or coordinate majors)
Recent innovations or changes to the curriculum
Anticipated curricular revisions
New or emerging aspects of the discipline, methodologies, and/or modes of dissemination (e.g., digital platforms) and how these may be incorporated into the existing curriculum

Pedagogy

Please begin this section by repeating the three to five questions from the introduction regarding pedagogy. The narrative's pedagogy section should address the following items and connect them to the department’s or program’s efforts toward and plans for furthering inclusive excellence:

The range of pedagogies represented in the department or program
Pedagogical shifts since the last review: impetus for and assessment of changes
The teaching strengths of the faculty as well as areas in need of greater support
Alignment of pedagogies with needs of students with a variety of backgrounds, learning modalities, and abilities
Access to/use of campus resources in the service of high-quality teaching (e.g., the library, academic technology, the museums, McKeen Center, Baldwin Center, etc.)
Mechanisms within the department/program for providing student academic support (e.g., tutoring, study groups, etc.)
Recent innovations to teaching methods
Anticipated pedagogical revisions

Student Experience

Please begin this section by repeating the three to five questions from the introduction regarding the student experience. The narrative's student experience section should address the following items and connect them to the department’s or program’s efforts toward and plans for furthering inclusive excellence:

Areas of strength/weakness in the student experience, including reflections on student demographic data at all levels of the department/program curriculum
Revisions undertaken since the last review to improve the quality of the student experience
Analysis of data gathered on the student experience in the department/program
Identified patterns and rationales for student course-taking
Cocurricular opportunities affiliated with the department/program (e.g., guest speakers/lecturers, fieldwork, trips, etc.)

Faculty Experience

Please begin this section by repeating the three to five questions from the introduction regarding the faculty experience. The narrative's faculty experience section should address the following items and connect them to the department’s or program’s efforts toward and plans for furthering inclusive excellence:

Roles of various categories of instructors (tenure-line, lecturers, laboratory instructors, visitors, etc.)
Forms of communication and support among instructors, especially for new members
Practices of mentoring
Faculty diversity: planning, recruitment, and retention
Full participation in diversity, equity, and inclusion: efforts and events involving all faculty in the work of inclusive excellence in the curriculum, pedagogies, colleagueship, and departmental culture, etc.
Departmental/programmatic efforts to support instructor professional development
Kinds and forms of intellectual/artistic engagement
Opportunities for interdisciplinary work (teaching, scholarship, etc.)
Departmental/programmatic efforts to engage with new modes of publication (i.e., digital or non-static formats) and the influence of these modes on existing understandings of rigor, scholarship, and evaluation
Events (lectures, speakers, symposia, etc.) that connect the department/program to a broader college audience

Future Vision

Please begin this section by repeating the three to five questions from the introduction regarding the future vision. The narrative's future vision section should address the following items and connect them to the department’s or program’s efforts toward and plans for furthering inclusive excellence:

Where the department/program is moving in each of the above areas
How inclusive excellence factors into the vision for the future, including the department's alignment with developments in the discipline and/or in related professional organizations
Specific and general questions the department/program would like the review committee to address

Supporting Materials

In the course of preparing the self-study narrative, chairs/directors will gather supporting materials from a variety of sources to be provided to the review committee.