Public Summary statements from 2019-20 departmental assessment reports
Athletic Training
Bethel College is voluntarily withdrawing accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education for the Bachelors of Science in Athletic Training. Students who entered this program for the Fall 2018 semester made up the last cohort to enter the program at Bethel College. The program will close following the graduation of the last students already enrolled in the program. The Bethel College Athletic Training Program is currently on probation by the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE), 6850 Austin Center Blvd., Suite 100, Austin, TX 78731-3101. The program has chosen to Voluntarily Withdraw its CAATE Accreditation effective June 1, 2021. The program will remain on probation until the Withdraw is effective and the program is closed.
Bible and Religion
The past year has seen major transition, including the retirement of the department chair, a 33% reduction in staffing (down to 1 FTE), a curriculum change, and new curriculum delivery conditions and constraints with COVID-19. Most of the teaching done in the BRL department continues to be focused on students taking our courses to meet requirements in the common core of our General Education program. This program will be evaluated by the Faith Formation Task Force. Recent changes (not yet reflected in assessment data) include greater pedagogical attention to exegetical process with a new instructor teaching those courses, and pedagogical focus on theological and ethical method for project preparation in the ethics courses (a new area, assessed retroactively in this report).
Biology
The great majority (nearly 100%) of Bethel graduates with biology majors, or natural sciences majors with considerable coursework in biology, enjoy success in graduate school admissions, entry into medical and other health science programs, and employment related to their academic discipline. In recent years, we made some changes in the department to help more students to succeed (e.g., working closely with the Center for Academic Development to provide assistance for specific courses, an advising program that addresses the varied needs of a diverse student body, the RICHE program to support summer internships and job shadowing). We have implemented steps to improve the senior research and the resultant thesis by intervening more frequently as projects are developing and the capstone paper is being written., including identifying distinct milestones for each semester.
Business
Bethel College’s bachelor of science degree in business administration is designed to expose students to skill sets in high demand not only for business but also for nonprofits and civic organizations. Combined with a commitment to experiential learning, Bethel business students have opportunities to engage with outside speakers, work on real-world problems with local businesses and gain valuable experience in teamwork. While the primary mission of Bethel’s business faculty is teaching, faculty recognize the importance of keeping abreast of current developments in their fields through research, consulting, speaking, and service activities. The Business department is eager to integrate and leverage the strengths of our new management hire. We believe this to be a positive addition to our department. Bethel continues to offer more Accounting courses than any other ACCK school, thus better preparing students interested in this career area for the CPA exam. Business faculty engage in ongoing continuing education, and some are sought after for national speaking engagements. Currently, the Business department at Bethel College is led by three women. Recent AAUW reports suggest that across the nation, females account for 20- 30% of full-time faculty in business programs. It is our pleasure to be outliers in this group. It is noted that a growing number of students entering Bethel College who identify business as their major continues to steadily increase. At the same time, a growing divide is evident between well prepared, academically gifted students and those students who enter the program less prepared and less able to successfully complete college level academic tasks. The department is encouraged to see additional support services for underprepared students, and the hire of athletic coaches who value the whole person. The majority of business majors enroll in an external internship during the senior year. During the 2019-2020 academic year, 10 students successfully completed experiential learning opportunities at for profit and not for profit businesses in Newton and surrounding area. Internship foci included accounting, marketing, graphic design, and small business management. Bethel College business majors who participated in an internship experience continued to score in the “excellent” range on the following personal competencies: professional attitude, enthusiasm, teamwork, initiative, and dependability. Bethel College business majors who participated in an internship experience continued to score in the “excellent” range on the following professional competencies: academic preparation, communication, critical thinking and leadership. During the 2019-2020 academic year, one student successfully completed a Research Seminar titled, “Ergonomically Scaled Piano Keyboards for Small-Handed Pianists in Japan: Implications for Marketing,” for which she was awarded a URICA grant.
Chemistry
Generally, students taking chemistry courses at Bethel College generally perform better than the 50th percentile on the American Chemical Society (ACS) exam, meaning that their knowledge and conceptual understanding is better than that obtained by students in equivalent classes across the nation. Unfortunately, we do not have much data for the 2019-2020 academic year since the COVD-19 pandemic prevented the department from giving its annual ACS exams. Chemistry students are actively engaged in research projects, and most of our chemistry students present their research findings at the annual URICA Symposium and at local and national chemical conferences, such as the Midwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society and PittCon. Finally, we have placed most of our graduates over the past 5 years into the workforce, a professional school (medical, dental, veterinarian), or graduate school within the first year (often sooner) following graduation from Bethel College. This success has been achieved by ensuring that our students graduate knowing how to use most scientific instrumentation and the skills to be critical thinkers.
Communication Arts
Departmental assessment data suggests that student achievement continues the trajectory of improvement noted in assessment reports from the last three years. Students met or exceeded benchmarks demonstrating competence in public presentation and academic writing (Goals I and II). In addition, students’ ability to articulate meaningful connections among historical, theoretical, and practical implications of communication processes (Goal III) indicate a slight improvement from the 2018-2019 academic year. With only two graduates in this year’s assessment pool, the significance of the positive trends noted is questionable. Nevertheless, the department is pleased with our graduates’ progress towards achieving the established benchmarks.
Elementary Education
With COVID-19 testing feedback has been sparse. We will collect data and evaluate as we go. The new Kansas Elementary K-6 standards are broken into the functions of content, assessment, and instruction including instructional strategies. Most of us in this department have always taught our content while at the same time modeling and embedding teaching strategies and methods of assessment. The new standards will lead us to reflect on how well be are combining all of these attributes and with the use of the new Praxis Elementary Content Knowledge for Teaching (7801) Exam, we will soon be able to see how successful our teaching has been in combining the functions of content, assessment, and instruction including instructional strategies.
English
The English Department is pleased with the academic performance of our students and their broader roles in campus life. One strong indicator of their success is the fact that two of the five Thresher Awards granted to graduating seniors in 2020 were earned by English Major graduates, one for her achievement in English, and another for her achievement on stage in college theater productions. The annual production of YAWP! is another highly visible sign of the activity of English students beyond the boundaries of their disciplinary study. That our students also are performing well in our major is, of course, equally important. And the fact that we continue to prepare students for success in graduate study, as demonstrated by a graduate’s earning a significant financial award from Baylor University, is also rewarding.
Health and Physical Education
The Health and Physical Education Department is in a transitional process, with two new full-time faculty, the conclusion of the athletic training degree, and the progression towards offering an exercise science degree. Given the trends suggesting a progressive decline in the number of students pursuing HPE with teacher licensure and the majority of the students pursuing the non-teacher licensure track, it seems implementing a new degree focusing on developing the skill sets necessary to obtain jobs in personal training, fitness directorships, coaching, exercise physiologist, cardiac rehabilitation, and graduate programs in athletic training and more, it makes sense to update the degree offering to reflect on the current trends within the field. Students will now graduate with the opportunity to sit for three national exams, all having the certification fees imbedded within their tuition fees as a means to ensure all students within the major do sit for these exams. The majority of jobs within the field require nationally recognized certifications in order to obtain employment, so it seems useful to prepare students in this manner. The certifications be added include the following: National Council on Strength and Fitness Sport Nutrition Specialist, National Strength and Conditioning Association Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, and American College of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer. In addition, the department has proposed a new course titled introduction to personal training, designed to prepare students early on to obtain the necessary skill set to begin developing job skills and experience. This course is associated with an optional certification as well. The coaching minor also went through some minor changes, embedding the National Strength and Conditioning Association Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist within the minor. Additional certification measures provide opportunity to validate credibility and provide students with tangible job skills. These certifications intend on being embedded once the new degree is approved.
History and Conflict Studies
History major: This year’s diverse cohort of history students include majors in History, History and Political Science and Art History. The closure of libraries with the advent of COVID 19 made the completion of projects difficult and impacted the overall outcome. In addition to seminar papers, the Art Historians also complete a museum exhibition that was shown online.
History and Political Science major: This was the second year that a History and Political Science major graduated. While data demonstrates strengths, due to the low student population in this major, it is difficult to provide public reporting of the data.
Mathematics
Overall, the Mathematical Sciences department met almost all goals and measurable objectives for 2019-2020. There were two objectives marked “not applicable” because there was no evidence collected during 2019-2020. The department is excited about the possibility of a new Software Development major, and the hope of maintaining consistent, full-time faculty dedicated to growing majors within the department. There is a strong interest in recruiting incoming students to pursue Mathematics or Software Development as a field of study.
Music
The Music Department continues to meet our established goals for our graduates. Our graduates continue to score quite high on comprehensive exams when compared with music graduates from across the country. In addition, our graduates are accepted into graduate programs without having to take remedial coursework to qualify for those positions. We will continue to work with incoming students on integrating theory, history and aural skills into the entire fabric of our curriculum. To that end, the music department will be evaluating our delivery of theory and aural skills to explore the possibilities of changing how that information is delivered and how it can be more tightly integrated into all aspects of the program.
Nursing
The Department of Nursing continues to monitor student performance on holistic admission criteria in comparison to NCLEX performance. In addition, departmental data evaluating student performance on standardized testing comparing NCLEX Client Needs Categories and Cognitive Levels and the relationship to overall first time pass rates will allow for some new information moving forward for the program. This quality improvement process allows the department to continually work at improving student retention and NCLEX pass rates as an element of accreditation. In addition, the Department of Nursing works to monitor student performance on the NCLEX-RN exam as well as program identified student outcomes to ensure continuation of approval requirements by the Kansas State Board of Nursing and accreditation requirements by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE). The Department of Nursing submitted a midterm Continuous Improvement Progress Report (CIRP) to CCNE to demonstrate continued compliance with the accreditation standards and ongoing program improvement as a part of the re-approval that was granted in 2014 through 2024.
Psychology
We plan to continue using the marked goals 1 − 3 and corresponding objectives to assess departmental outcomes. However, we will likely change some curricular aspects that could affect the outcomes used in the following assessment report, which will be adjusted if needed. Due to departmental faculty changes for both faculty lines, and the impending hire of a new faculty member, several curricular and assessment changes are likely in the next 1 − 3 years. We may also adjust assessment goals based on changes to the standardized ETS Psychology Area Exam in the future. Lastly, we are convinced that student growth and progress is holistic rather than discrete, and changing student demographics at the college may warrant consideration of other types of assessment instruments or learning outcomes in the coming years (e.g., more specific work-related outcome assessment).
Social Work
The Bethel College Social Work Program has been fully accredited by the Council on Social Work Education since 1974. In February of 2019, the Program received reaffirmation of accreditation for the full eight years with no concerns. Annual internal assessments continue to indicate that all nine competencies/outcomes required by CSWE are routinely met (exceeding the benchmark of having 85% or more of students score in the adequate to outstanding range). In addition to meeting competencies, the Program’s strengths include strong advising relationships between students and faculty, the presence of a student social work organization to engage students, and strong attention to issues of diversity and social change.
Teacher Education
The Teacher Education Department is regularly involved in assessing its students and programs in regard to institutional objectives and state and national standards. Institutional data demonstrate that Bethel students and graduates compare favorably with local, state, and national indicators. Affirmation of this assessment has been provided by the Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) and the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) (onsite visit, March 2019). For further consumer information about the education programs, see consumer information at the following website: https://www.bethelks.edu/academics/areas-study/teacher-education
Visual Arts and Design
Art major: Our current senior majors are assessed through art writing, oral presentations, and the senior exhibit. Students earlier in the program are evaluated through a sophomore-level assessment rubric, usually based on work in the foundations courses and an individual presentation to department faculty. Our recent students have been more successful presenting ideas orally than in writing, so to help our students improve their art writing skills, we now incorporate multiple writing assignments into all of the lowerand upper-level art history and design history courses. To help our students more adequately prepare for their senior exhibits and presentations, since Fall 2017 we now offer Art Seminar in the fall, rather than in the spring, and set multiple deadlines to break projects down into smaller steps. Pandemic conditions affected our courses and some of our assessments this year but our seniors all persisted to graduation.
Graphic Design major: We had three graduates in graphic design, who exhibited senior projects, completed internships, and developed portfolios for future employers. Pandemic conditions affected our courses and some of our assessments this year, but our seniors all persisted to graduation. The graphic design major was eliminated in 2019-20 due to Financial Sustainability concerns.