All graduates who will receive an associate degree or certificate of completion in 2011 are required to take the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency scheduled for April 7 and 9. Graduates should have received a letter about this in the mail, telling them to turn in a sign-up sheet, choosing what day they can attend. Sophomores who haven’t done this yet need to contact Alaina Rice, administrative assistant to the dean of instruction. According to Cynthia Rapp, dean of instruction, failure to participate in the assessments will result in a hold being placed on your final transcript. “It’s required by the crediting agency to have evidence of student learning; part of that has to be data that can be compared to other institutions,” Todd Carter, director of research and assessment said. All day classes on Thursday are cancelled for the assessments. Those who have chosen to participate on Thursday must be at the table in the hallway outside the library in the Hobble Academic Building at 1:30 p.m. If you plan to come Saturday, you must meet at 9 a.m. in Room A168. The assessments will be in rooms A168 and A170 on Thursday and Room A168 on Saturday. Graduates should have gotten a schedule in the letter received, however if you lost your, you may contact Rice or Rapp. Testing is scheduled to be completed by 4 p.m. Thursday and by 11:30 a.m. Saturday. The assessments will be composed of two parts: the critical thinking part, and the First Year Seminar post-writing assessment, which is compared to the writing assessment done at the beginning of First Year Seminar. The results of the assessments are not kept hidden from students. Students who complete the test will receive the results in the mail within six to eight weeks. They can use these results to better understand their skill level and learning abilities. The results of the assesments are instrumental in helping the faculty to better teach students, and in comparing the teaching success of SCCC/ATS with other colleges. “We use it as one of the indicators of how effective we’ve been in teaching,” Carter said­­­. “If they don’t give their best effort, then we’re not really getting a good picture of how we compare to other institutions.” Although no student is jumping at the chance to take a test, the data is important to the school. “I know to you guys it seems like just another test, but we really do use the data,” Carter said. “We have a faculty meeting the same day to decide how it’ll be used and how we’ll go about using the data.” We believe students should be well-informed about the CAAP assessments and their purpose, and as a result, should take them seriously and do their best work so that SCCC/ATS can become an even better school.