Senate should weigh benefits, provide proof to constituents

Educators are consistently pressured by the institutions they serve to provide assessments for the work they do. These assessments have two key benefits: the measurements provide evidence that a program works, and the results of these assessments help faculty members argue for their programs’ budgets.

Assessments can also provide administrators with the necessary proof that a community will gain competent graduates in the workforce and that the college will have a return on investment by offering that program.

For example, you can measure the benefit of continuing, let’s say, an all-online business academy by assessing its graduation rate and then examining the programs cost versus the revenue it generates.

However, this cost/benefit logic is not as readily applied when observing the benefits of the difficult-to-assess creative studies such as humanities, art, and music.

This assumption illustrates that assessment is not strictly limited to academic merit, but that assessment also helps administrators at public institutions gage whether a course of study is worth subsidizing with tax-dollars.

With this in mind, we need to conduct a cost/benefit analysis of the Student Senate’s leadership trip.

The for-profit National Council on Student Leadership’s website states its conference sessions are based on the “Social Change Model of Leadership,” developed in 1996 by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA.

The model focuses on the seven “C’s” of leadership; consciousness of self, congruence, commitment, collaboration, common purpose, controversy with civility, and citizenship, with the inclusion of an eighth C, “change.”

These eight values can be measured using a statistically valid assessment tool known as the Socially Responsible Leadership Scale, which is distributed at no cost by the National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs (http://nclp.umd.edu/srls.aspx).

To our knowledge, an assessment of the Senate Executive Board’s leadership proficiency has not been conducted. However, cost-effective online leadership training is available and an assessment tool already exists at no cost. For $3,450, Senate could offer 50 students the opportunity to complete The National Center for Student Leadership Certified Student Leader: Group Fundamentals online course, which is offered through the NCSL website.

That would be more than enough slots to cover the entire Senate and a majority of the Campus Activity Board representatives. This would be an obvious course of action for responsible leaders to  take.

However, the Student Senate has argued that spending $18,500 from your student activity fees to send nine lucky students to Orlando, Florida, will somehow be more beneficial to the student body. We request that the Student Senate provide some proof as to what these supposed benefits actually are.