The Department of Family and Consumer Sciences will graduate Fashion Merchandising students who perform well in positions of employment within the fashion industry.

The student will demonstrate professional competence and the ability to apply what they have learned (egs., appropriate product knowledge, knowledge of business procedures, knowledge of industry systems) in various aspects of fashion merchandising.

The supervisor evaluation form for fashion merchandising interns evaluates three skill areas (personal skills, interpersonal skills, and professional characteristics including appropriate use of knowledge from the program content). Both questions from this form used as indicators are essentially overall supervisor ratings of the intern. One of them rates the interns on a Likert-type scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest rating and 5 being the highest rating. The other is a "yes-no" indicator of whether the employer would hire the intern in the company for an entry-level management position. Internship is a requirement for degree completion in this program, so all fashion merchandising students are evaluated in this way. The instrument, which includes the supervisor rating of the intern that will be extracted and reported, was developed by the department faculty as a whole. Instruments used by other family and consumer sciences/fashion merchandising colleges and departments were reviewed in the development of the instrument. The attached instrument was designed to be generic for all programs in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences that require this type of internship and is published in the Internship Handbook which serves as the textbook for the internship course (FCS 469). The other programs that use this same form are interior design, general family and consumer sciences (without a teaching certificate), and food service management.

80% of business supervisors of fashion merchandising interns will give the intern a rating of 3.5 or higher on a 5.0 scale and 80% of business supervisors will indicate that they would hire the intern given the availability of a suitable entry-level management position in the company.

100% of fashion merchandising interns received a rating of 4.0 or higher on a 5.0 scale from the business supervisors at the internship sites.  100% of the business supervisors indicated that they would hire the intern working under them for a suitable entry-level management position within the company.

This finding far exceeded the criteria that had been established, and it was gratifying to see such a strong business supervisor response to the interns from this program who are preparing to enter the job market.  One additional idea for the 2009-2010 cycle would be to better use the input in terms of what could be improved from the standpoint of student performance.  One of the questions asked of business supervisors was areas of performance in need of improvement.  Better use of this information needs to be incorporated into the next cycle. 

The Department of Family and Consumer Sciences will graduate Fashion Merchandising majors who have an in-depth knowledge of the content area of the major.

Students graduating from the fashion merchandising program will demonstrate the knowledge and skills necessary for entry-level management in fashion retailing/merchandising positions.

The Exit Survey for fashion merchandising majors includes multiple-choice and short-answer sections that test retention of course material and a case study that applies directly to retail apparel merchandising; it is graded on a pass/fail basis. (Each program area has multiple-choice, short answer and other questions that are specific to that program content.) To develop this instrument, faculty in the content area reviewed course and program objectives and chose questions from exams that reflected important concepts that students should retain. The test is used repetitively and the scoring is holistic and, we believe, consistent. For security reasons, the "test" portion (multiple-choice questions, short essay questions, and case study) is not attached. However, this document is available in the chair's office. For AY 2009-2010, a standardized grading rubric will be developed.

80% of students who complete the fashion merchandising program's Exit Survey will score a grade of Pass or High Pass on the content portions of the exam. Exams are being graded holistically to this point, but for the next assessment period (AY 2009-2010), a standardized grading rubric will be developed.

Data collection indicated that 87.5% of fashion merchandising majors scored a grade of Pass or High Pass on the content portion of the Exit Survey. 

This criterion was exceeded.  However, it is acknowledged that the content portion of the Exit Survey needs to be updated, and a standardized grading rubric needs to be developed.

Department of Family and Consumer Sciences will graduate students who are satisfied with a degree in Fashion Merchandising.

Students will evaluate and express their satisfaction with degree program learning experiences such as program content provided in degree program course work, opportunities for networking, and participation in professional organizations provided by degree program activities. While student evaluation of program-related learning experiences is a performance outcome, rather than a student learning outcome, it does provide degree program faculty with very valuable feedback based upon students' abilities to reflect upon the value of their educational activities.

The comprehensive Family and Consumer Sciences Exit Survey includes a student rating of the program content in the major and student rating of opportunities that were provided by the program to network and engage with professional organizations. Student ratings of these items will be extracted and analyzed to determine the level of student satisfaction with their learning experiences in these areas. A higher score indicates a higher level of satisfaction. The Exit survey is a comprehensive instrument collaboratively developed, several years ago, by faculty of departmental degree programs to collect student evaluation feedback on key aspects of their degree programs, and also to test student knowledge in their program's content area. Although it is periodically reviewed for improvement by current faculty, most of the Exit Survey items remain stable from year to year. The Exit Survey is administered in paper form to students in several departmental degree programs for FCS. Student feedback pertaining to different degree program majors are differentiated, and analyzed separately. A copy of the section of the Exit Survey which pertains to student feedback has been attached.

80% of graduating seniors who complete an Exit Survey will rate the program content and opportunities for networking and professional organization participation in the major with a score of 3.0 or greater. A 4-point scale will be used for rating, where a higher score indicates a higher satisfaction rating.

In an improvement over ratings shown from the last OATdb cycle, 100% of students rated program content with a rating of 3 or better on a 4-point scale.  93.5% of students rated opportunities for networking and quality of professional organizations with a rating of 3 or better.  Therefore, these criteria were met for all three areas.

Findings indicate that student perceptions in terms of program content, opportunities for networking, and quality of professional organizations were overwhelmingly positive, indicating general satisfaction with the fashion merchandising program.  However, all of these areas could be improved.  Faculty continually search for the best, most updated textbooks and ways of improving program content.  Opportunities for networking could be enhanced through bringing additional speakers to classes within the program and to meetings of the Fashion Merchandising Club.