Centers & Institutes
Assessment Center
Our award-winning Assessment Center in the School of Business and Economics offers a very exciting opportunity for our students and has two primary goals. First, we want to ensure that students who leave Indiana University Northwest are able to succeed in their chosen fields. We want them to be able to find employment and perform well in their jobs. Second, we want to ensure that our program is functioning effectively at the university level. We want to ensure that students are successful in school and that our courses are effective in correcting students’ deficits. To achieve these goals we have chosen competencies that we have identified as being highly sought by employers as well as important to academic success, including critical thinking, teamwork, leadership, delegation, ethics, and conflict management.
Students will complete the Assessment Center (as a course requirement) in both their freshman and senior years, as we help students identify their developmental needs with respect to certain life skills that are helpful to students as they progress through college and enter the workforce. We place students into work related simulations that allow them to see what it is like to be in the workplace. Their performance is then evaluated by business leaders from the community.
This approach is going to benefit students in several ways. First, students will be introduced to key skills that employers look for in applicants. Second, students will be able to spend their time at Indiana University Northwest improving deficits identified in the Assessment Center. Students will prepare a development plan based on the feedback from the Assessment Center. The development plan will establish goals for improving deficits using coursework and other Indiana University Northwest activities. Lastly, Indiana University Northwest will use the Assessment Center data to modify its curriculum to further benefit the students and better prepare them for the workplace.