TO: Montana Board of Regents

FROM: Roger Barber, Deputy Commissioner for Academic & Student Affairs

RE: An Assessment Plan for the Transfer Audit Policies

DATE: May 4, 2005

The performance audit on Transfer of Credits practices in the Montana University System recommended an assessment plan as part of the overall response to the audit s findings. That assessment plan would monitor compliance with the policies adopted by the Board of Regents, in response to the audit s recommendations; and would also hopefully assist the Board in determining the effectiveness and appropriateness of the policies.

A work group was organized to develop that assessment plan. Jim Rimpau, director of planning and analysis at Montana State University-Bozeman, chaired the group, and its membership included many of Jim s institutional research colleagues from throughout the System.

The group s work was complicated by the fact that it could not begin to develop assessment plans for the policies until those policies were ready for review and adoption by the Board of Regents. Drafts were shared with the assessment work group, as they came in, so monitoring and compliance options could be discussed. The version that would go to the Board was most helpful, obviously, in guiding the work group s discussions. Some of those final policy drafts were still being developed as late as the first week in May, however. Ultimately, a final assessment model will depend on the policy decisions made by the Board of Regents at this meeting.

As a consequence, the assessment work group will not have a final proposal for the Board of Regents until the September 2005 meeting in Billings.

Jim Rimpau has prepared a short update that sets out some of the assessment ideas for the transfer audit policies. That update is attached to this memorandum.