Guest Speaker Dr. Terry Rhodes, AAC&U

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Terrel Rhodes is currently Vice President for the Office of Quality, Curriculum and Assessment at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) where he focuses on the quality of undergraduate education, access, general education, and assessment of student learning. He is also director of the annual AAC&U General Education Institute. Terry Rhodes received his B.A. from Indiana University at Bloomington and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before moving into national higher education work, he was a faculty member for twenty-five years. Rhodes was Vice Provost for Curriculum and Dean of Undergraduate Programs at Portland State University and Professor of Public Administration. Prior to assuming his positions at PSU, Rhodes served in several roles at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, including Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Programs and Special Assistant to the Provost for Assessment.

Rhodes has published extensively on both undergraduate education reform issues and in his academic field of public policy and administration. His many books and articles cover such issues as integrative learning, e-portfolios, high school-college connections, and public policies affecting urban American Indian communities. He is member of the Ethics Section of the American Society for Public Administration.

At AAC&U he is working with a project on faculty driven assessment of student learning supported by the Fund for Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) and the State Farm Companies Foundation entitled Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE). VALUE faculty teams are developing rubrics for the full range of essential learning outcomes that can be used with authentic student work to demonstrate quality student learning. Continuing the work of the Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College project, his office furthers the importance of clearly articulating the qualities of a well-educated person, creating coherent educational programs that cultivate those qualities, and assessing to determine if they have been achieved through general education, the majors, and co-curricular work.

A new initiative, The Quality Collaboratives: Assessing and Reporting Degree Qualifications Profile Competencies in the Context of Transfer, lead by Rhodes is working with campuses in nine states to test whether assessing student competencies across essential learning outcomes can become the metric for transfer between 2 and 4 year institutions.

Dr. Rhodes has been an educational consultant and outside evaluator at numerous colleges and universities, with a special interest in curriculum development and assessment of student learning outcomes, and has served as a reviewer and outside evaluator for the U.S. Department of Education.

 On Tuesday, January 17, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., in the Davies Theater, Dr. Terry Rhodes from AAC&U will present Liberal Education Reform and Integrative Learning at UW-Eau Claire: A National Perspective. Rhodes will provide his perspective about what is happening in liberal education around the nation and give us feedback on his impressions of the reform process at UW-Eau Claire.  Please join us for this important presentation.