Every five to seven years academic degree programs in the CUNY system have to undergo a process called a Periodic Program Review (PPR). The PPR is an in depth look at the academic major under review from a programmatic, institutional, and industry wide perspective. The ultimate goal of the PPR is to begin an honest review of the program effectiveness which will then be used to help to guide the evolution of the major for the next five to seven years. Because I am the sole full time New Media faculty member, the research and drafting of the report for the LaGuardia New Media Technology program became my responsibility.
Over the past year I have been gathering the information and statistics necessary to draft the initial report on the status of the New Media degree. I had to put together a fairly extensive program assessment on the New Media Technology major that ranged between 25-35 pages detailing the following:
- Challenges and issues for the program
- Enrollment trends
- Retention
- Graduation statistics
- Transfer statistics
- Pass rates in gateway courses
- Full-time vs. part time faculty ratio
- Educational goals of the program (key competencies)
- Student learning outcomes (how are they doing)?)
- Individual course review
- Recommendations and the action plan for the future
I finished the report a few months back and got it ready for an external peer review from an objective industry professional. Janet Esquirol, an Assistant Professor in the Media Arts & Technology department at CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) agreed to serve as the reviewer. Ms. Esquirol specializes in advertising & publishing and is a Creative Director for Sylvan Social Technology. With multiple degrees in areas of art & technology, most recently in motion graphics and user interface design, Janet has worked over the past decade as an adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, SUNY FIT, AiNYC, and now as full time faculty at CUNY. She reviewed the PPR and wrote up a brief report that addressed the quality of the program, curricula, transferability to senior campuses, and workforce issues of our program.
The LaGuardia New Media Technology PPR can be found here.
The external report by Professor Janet Esquirol can be found here