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 (e.g., 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-yes with reservations-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.

At least 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.

Of the 23 graduates who received undergraduate degrees (BA/BS) in Fashion Merchandising, employer/supervisor evaluation data is available on 20.  Of the 20, nine (45%) received a rating of 5, the highest score; eight (40%) received a rating of 4; 2 (10%) received a rating of 3, and one (5%) received a rating of 2.  Therefore, 85% received a rating of 3.5 or higher on a 5-point scale, so this criterion was met. 

This benchmark continues to work well for measuring the effectiveness of the Fashion Merchandising program.  The student who received the rating of 2 really deserved it, in my opinion.  I also had observed the same sense of "putting in time to get the diploma" that the supervisor mentioned as I spoke with her about this student.  We should continue to use this particular evaluation as one measure of program effectiveness. 

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 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.

At least 90% of students who complete the fashion merchandising program's Exit Survey will score a grade of Low Pass, Pass or High Pass on the content portions of the exam.

Of the 23 students who graduated with degrees in Fashion Merchandising (BA/BS), exit survey data is available on 13 students.  Of the 13, 3 (23%) scored a rating of High Pass; 8 (62%) scored a rating of Pass; 2 (15%) scored a rating of Low Pass.  Therefore, this criterion was met.

In recent years, we have struggled with how to handle this Exit Survey.  It is difficult to remember to update the survey every time a change in the curriculum occurs (programs and courses in the department must continually be updated because they are pre-professional programs that serve fields that are constantly in flux), so we get to the point of administering it and realize that it is needs updating.  Dr. Laura Burleson is working on a rubric whereby we would access students' logs during the internship process to determine effectiveness of course content as students applied it to the internship activities and problems.  We are going to try it for a cycle with the expectation that it will lead to curricular changes and improved program effectiveness.