Accountability and Assessment

Crystallizing our students' bright future: Accountability through programmatic assessment

Reflecting our upcoming 75th anniversary in 2026, our faculty and staff has developed a new strategic plan. The unifying theme for the strategic plan is “A Diamond in the Desert,” signifying the School’s reputation as a jewel located in Southern Arizona. As part of these efforts, we are revisiting the School’s programmatic strengths, including a revised curriculum that reflects the new directions of our industry. Connected to these efforts, we believe that navigating the programmatic assessment process has helped us identify the specific touchpoints where we need to place strategic investment and faculty energy. 

The core focus of assessment rests in ensuring students are effectively prepared with the credentials they need to succeed post-graduation. Our curriculum must constantly evolve to keep up with these challenges. Assessment instills accountability in this work. The UA School of Journalism is working toward a culture of continuous improvement. Curricular transparency aids this process by sharing the efforts, successes and acknowledgement of the necessity for progress in teaching and learning at the School. In accordance with ACEJMC best practices, we publicly post this assessment plan document, once ratified by our faculty, on our School’s website for public viewing.

How we built our assessment plan

To address these issues, the School created a new assessment plan in Fall 2025. In developing this new assessment plan, the School leadership first met with representatives from the University of Arizona's University Center for Assessment, Teaching & Technology in Summer 2025. The Director also met with SBS leadership and the Dean’s Office fellow for assessment in Fall 2025, as well as consulted with the School’s previous four directors for institutional memory related to assessment practices in the School. 

Guided by these insights, the assessment process began with benchmarking to understand the specific direct and indirect measures used in assessment plans for similarly-situated ACEJMC peer institutions. The process started with the School’s program coordinator collecting public-facing assessment plans from the selected units. The next step revolved around studying the plans to identify the specific measures used in the plans. After identifying best practices in assessment from peer institutions, our Assessment Committee returned to the School's written assessment plan to see how the School’s direct and indirect measures could be updated.

In September 2025, a new assessment committee was formed with three senior faculty representatives, each with significant institutional knowledge around the process. To provide an industry lens on the goals contained in this assessment plan, a draft was presented to the School’s Journalism Advisory Council, a 19-member oversight body populated by industry professionals and alumni. Finally, this written assessment plan, in its entirety, was brought to the full faculty and staff at its October 6, 2025 meeting for review and feedback. The faculty formally voted on the plan at its October 24, 2025. The plan received unanimous support from all eligible faculty (7-0).

Read our assessment plan here:

How we are implementing the plan

The school’s faculty met at a mini-retreat in January 2026. Our team refined the process for collecting data from the core courses listed in the curriculum map. Full-time and adjunct faculty were present to discuss the process of assessment, setting the measurement tools and participating in the plan for data collection. The mini-retreat meeting began with a presentation from the Director for Learning Assessment at the University Center for Assessment, Teaching & Technology (UCATT), Dr. Elaine Marchello, who briefed the faculty on the importance of program assessment and the university’s expectations regarding collection and submission of assessment data. SBS Deans Leadership Fellow of Academic Affairs and Student Success, Professor Eleni Hasaki, also was present to provide feedback from the College’s perspective regarding school assessment, best practices and also listen and observe the school’s assessment process. Hasaki also worked one-on-one at the retreat with faculty to determine effective curriculum mapping design and how to best present it for assessment purposes. 

Following the mini-retreat, the assessment committee conducted an audit of all syllabi to verify alignment between the documents and ACEJMC values and competencies. The assessment committee then met on January 20, 2026 to check the syllabi and reached out to respective faculty with edits. Faculty resubmitted their revised syllabi by January 27, 2026. The assessment committee met again on January 27, 2026 to discuss assessment measure tools and check if the proposed assignment for collecting data met the requirements. Data collection from the core undergraduate courses in Journalism began that same week.   

How we are closing the loop

Assessment should be a continuous, cyclical process that needs to be fine-tuned. To this end, the Assessment Committee will review the data as a team and identify key findings. These meetings will be conducted in mid-to-late November and mid-to-late April. The Assessment Committee will then share findings at the final faculty meeting of the semester (December and May, respectively). Faculty will be invited to provide their interpretations of the data and provide recommended practices to address any deficiencies.  Separately, we will incorporate course improvements as part of the annual review process. We will then ask the Assessment Committee to compile and distribute these best practices, so that faculty can learn from one another. Finally, the Assessment Committee will provide an annual report of the number and type of course improvements made by faculty. This year-end data will be presented at the annual faculty retreat each August, alongside findings from UCATT’s annual review of assessment data.

Transparency and Student Success

Beyond our assessment process, we track various data points associated with student success. Here's a snapshot of key metrics associated with enrollment, retention and graduation. 

Undergraduate enrollment by academic year

Undergraduate enrollment has gradually declined from a high of 600 students to the 2024-25 number of 252. As universities across the country face an enrollment decline, our School is working to maintain or grow the program through increased recruitment and improved curriculum. We believe our School’s renewed efforts and commitment to recruiting will demonstrate success in future years.

Retention is an indicator of whether incoming first-year undergraduate journalism students tend to stay with the major or switch to another major by their second year. In 2024, 72% of Journalism majors returned for a second year, compared to 82% of students across the University. While the School is glad to see the majority of students stick with the major, faculty recognize the need to continue efforts to retain students to match or exceed the university retention rate.

Graduation rates by academic year

Below are the percentages of freshmen journalism students who graduate within four years and within six years, compared to graduation rates for the University of Arizona as a whole. The J-School’s 4th year graduation rate increased to 59% for fourth-year graduates who started in 2021, slightly higher than the UA’s rate for the same cohort. The journalism school’s sixth-year graduation rate of 67% for the Fall 2019 cohort was just lower than the UA’s sixth year average graduation rate of 71%.