Faculty/Staff Daily Digest

UASCEND Professional Development / Mini Grant Opportunity

The Office of Academic Program Assessment (OAPA) is excited to offer the UASCEND program again during the Spring 2027 semester. UASCEND provides a semester-long multi-module online professional development curriculum for faculty to strengthen their skills in designing, implementing, and evaluating effective assessment strategies to enhance student learning and success. Through the UASCEND curriculum, faculty will design course learning objectives aligned to their program learning objectives and, if appropriate, Common Curriculum objectives. They will also generate assignments and rubrics aligned to those objectives and that scaffold student success.

 Modules include:

• Assessment for Student Success
• Defining Learning Objectives
• Universal Design for Learning
• Writing Multiple Choice Questions
• Aligning and Designing Learning Activities
• Aligning and Designing Assessments
• Developing Rubrics

Module lengths vary, ranging from 1-4 weeks, with the entire program offered sequentially across the semester. Upon successful completion, faculty participants are given a certificate and a mini-grant award of $2,000.

The Spring 2027 Curriculum Schedule can be found here

Any CIRE, tenure-track, or tenured faculty member who is interested in gaining skills in the above topics should apply! Faculty must have a single or multi-section course to work on that is part of their undergraduate degree-conferring academic program. For multi-section courses, we encourage multiple faculty who teach different sections to apply together to increase course consistency in terms of course learning objectives and signature assignments. For multi-campus courses, we encourage you to include faculty from regional campuses.

Applications are being accepted through November15th here but we are also happy to work with you if you need an application extension.