The Department of Family and Consumer Sciences will graduate general Family and Consumer Sciences majors who perform well in employment positions within the field

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 family-and-consumer-sciences-related positions.

Supervisor evaluation form for general family and consumer sciences 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, hire 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 family and consumer sciences students are evaluated in this way except for the teacher certification students who are evaluated by the teachers supervising their methods courses. 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 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 (FACS 4369). The other programs that use this same form are interior design, fashion merchandising, and food service management.

80% of business supervisors of family and consumer sciences 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.

There were 21 students who graduated with the Family and Consumer Sciences degree for the 2014-2015 assessment cycle.  Of these 21 students, three received a rating of 3 - 3.2 (14%) which is still considered a "Good" rating.  Six interns received a rating of 3.8 - 4 (29%), and two 9%) received a rating of 4.5.  There were 10 students (48%) who received a rating of 5 or 5+.  Therefore, the percentage who received a rating of 3.5 or better (18 students) was 86%, and this criterion was met. 

Of the 21 students who received degrees in Family and Consumer Sciences during the 2014-2015 assessment cycle, 18 (86%) would be hired by their internship supervisor for a suitable entry-level opening.  The other students (three or 14%) would be eligible to be hired "with reservations" meaning that more experience and training is needed.  Therefore, this criterion is met.

Overall, business supervisors, student teacher supervisors, and others who are supervising Family and Consumer Sciences interns are pleased with the students who working under their supervision.  The lowest rating that was assigned was a 3 which is still indicates satisfactory performance ("Good").  Perhaps the most appropriate action for this goal and its accompanying objective would be to change the criterion level to a "3.0 or better" rather than "3.5 or better."

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

Students graduating from the family and consumer sciences program will demonstrate the knowledge and skills necessary for entry-level management in family-and-consumer-sciences-related positions.

For many years, Family and Consumer Sciences graduating seniors completed an Exit Survey consisting of demographic data, professional goals, and a series of multiple choice and short-answer questions, all designed to determine whether the student had retained information from the courses over the four-year Family and Consumer Sciences program.  However, the department decided that this survey did not discriminate well and therefore a rubric was designed that could be applied to internship logs with the goal of determining what students had retained from their course work and applied during the internship experience.

Based on a rubric developed in-house, 90% of Family and Consumer Sciences program graduates will score a High Pass, Pass, or Low Pass on an analysis of their internship logs designed to determine application of knowledge and skills during the internship process.

100% of Family and Consumer Sciences graduates received a rating of High Pass (5 or 24%), Pass (10 or 48%), or Low Pass (6 or 28%) using the rubric developed for the analysis of internship logs.  Therefore, this criterion was met.

Although the department was seeking a better way to collect data to determine whether students retained content-area knowledge and skills over the course of the program, the method developed was not particularly satisfactory.  To begin with, it was hoped that only three weeks' worth of logs would be adequate for review for the analysis, but that small sample of logs was woefully inadequate.  The department needs to regroup and decide how to handle the assessment from this time forward.  The search for a satisfactory method of assessing this objective needs to continue.