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Teresa Simpson's submission to SoACE Voices, March 2010

**How Lamar University is taking Assessment to a Different Level **

Has your school been looking for ways to improve the tracking of employment rates of its’ graduated students? In 2006, the new Director of Lamar University’s Career and Testing Center, Teresa Simpson, took on this repeated question; “What is our employment rate?” Finding the best way to attain the most accurate answer to this ongoing question would ultimately attract and build the University’s support, supply a higher success rate in student employment opportunity and positively contribute to the ongoing mission toward recruitment efforts.

Simpson set out to document who was hiring Lamar University students, who was offering internships and who found these opportunities beneficial to their professional development. With combined efforts of colleagues, Simpson worked to find ways to improve existing surveyed data and its capture rate. A year into this effort, another colleague and Simpson worked steadily with information provided from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board finding out how high the demand for this information really was. While compiling data needed to push this project through, Simpson met with the Dean's of each college to identify if this information would be beneficial for them to review on an annual basis. Impressed and intrigued, the Deans gave Simpson just the answer she was looking for.

The employment rate survey was taken to the next level through the review by Simpson and her partnered Deans. Finally, it was approved to be given to the graduate office and added to the applying graduate for graduation. This now allowed for about an 86% return on the survey. Working closely with their Deans, the Lamar University Career and Testing Center then conducts a quarterly follow-up in order to review the captured data. The project to attain the most accurate answer for student employment rates was finally seeping into the system generating a path to clearer outcomes.

The post graduate report for Lamar University was the first to have been bound and sent to the President of the University and the Deans. The report allows for perspective students, current students, employers, parents and faculty and staff to see the vast recruitment efforts made annually to the students of Lamar University. It allows interested parties to see where students with a degree from Lamar University are obtaining employment, starting salaries and where they will attend graduate school if this is the case.

The Lamar University College of Engineering performs exit interviews for all graduating seniors and graduate students, which provides the perfect opportunity for capturing needed data. Now, the students are to complete an employment survey immediately after meeting with his/her Chair. This then supports the university’s path toward more accurate information needed to help better the efforts made in supplying the best support system for the students’ employment success rate. In support of this venture, the Dean for the College of Business is starting this endeavor in Spring 2010.

A web link found at [], was also designed to bring life to the statistics captured in order to shed light on the value of an internship or co-op for each College of the University. In addition, the public can use this site to view the link for Success Stories, which displays the devotion, time, money and effort spent in providing solid professional development opportunities for students of our Colleges and Universities.

Simpson is proud to state, “As Career service professionals, we are not here to "get a student a job," but to make every attempt at identifying all pliable opportunities, as well as the professional development skills, to capitalize on that career opportunity when it comes their way.” Together, Lamar University will make every effort to surpass the expectations that they have for the employment success rates of their students. With this data, the field is narrowed and the opportunity for their success is widened.