AFA Perspectives Issue 4 2019: Data-Driven Practices

JASON BERGERON As campuses increase efforts to enhance and transform the fraternity and sorority experience, external reviews increasingly emerge as mechanisms to identify gaps and inform solutions. By simplification (or one could argue, oversimplification), an external review often consists of assembling a team of content experts that, through a combination of virtual and on-site data collection, evaluates the current effectiveness of a fraternity and sorority program. This often leads to identifying key areas for improvement and heightened effectiveness.

External reviews, however, are more complex than that, as they hold a unique space within student affairs and higher education. Specifically, that complexity rests at the intersection of research, assessment, and evaluation, including important elements of all three concepts. There is no “guide book” for external reviews. Campuses are often left to their own devices to figure out how to best navigate the planning, implementation, and post-review expectations of an external review. While certainly not an expert on the topic of external reviews, I have been privileged to manage external reviews from both sides: as an external reviewer and coordinator for campus-based external reviews. Those experiences — coupled with a deep, almost unexplainable affinity for assessment work — inform the following makeshift “roadmap” that can help campuses determine if an external review is the right decision and if so, how to effectively navigate it.