Every assessment office knows the moment. A new program head arrives, opens a shared drive, and finds last year's plan, two versions of the year before, and nothing that explains why the measure for the third outcome was changed. The previous program head has moved to another role, and the feedback they received, along with the conversation about what to fix, went with them.
Program heads commonly change every few years. Over a full accreditation cycle, a program may pass through several of them. If its assessment history belongs to an individual, it will be lost, and on a predictable schedule.
What leaves with people
- Last year's feedback, and the priorities it set for this year.
- The reasoning behind changes to outcomes or measures.
- Agreements with the assessment office: an extension, a measure being piloted, a curriculum map being redrawn.
- The assessment instruments themselves, saved on a personal drive.
- A sense of what a complete plan looks like for this program.
None of this is confidential. It is simply kept in the wrong place: an inbox, a laptop, a memory. Each loss is small. Together, they mean that a new program head often spends their first year rebuilding what the program already knew.
Attach the record to the program
The remedy is old and unglamorous: attach the record to the program, not to the person who leads it. The program continues; program heads hold the role for a time. If plans, reports, files and correspondence belong to the program, a new program head inherits its history on their first day, without anyone having to remember to pass it on.
A handover checklist that works with any tools
An office can do most of this without dedicated software.
- Keep a list of programs, with the current program head for each and when they took on the role.
- File every plan and report by program and year, somewhere the assessment office controls, never in a personal folder.
- Record decisions where the next person will look: in the program's file or correspondence, not in a hallway conversation.
- When a program head changes, send the successor the last two reports and the priorities they set.
- Meet once, early. A short conversation with the last report open saves a year of guesswork.
- Ask the new program head to read the previous plan before writing the next one. Most of it will still hold.
If you are the new program head
Start with what the program has already been told.
- Read the last report first, then the plan it reviewed. The feedback makes more sense with the plan beside it.
- Find the priority the report set for this cycle, and check whether anything has been done about it.
- Look for changes to outcomes or measures across the last two plans. If the plan does not explain them, ask the assessment office.
- Check that the instruments in the appendix are the ones the faculty actually use.
- Introduce yourself to the assessment office early in the year, before the deadline makes it urgent.
None of this takes long. It is the difference between continuing a program's assessment and starting it again.
How ProverbAI handles a handover
In ProverbAI, access belongs to the program's role rather than to an individual. Program heads are invited to lead their program, handing over to a successor is a single step, and the record shows who has led the program and when.
In the first release, everything the program has built up stays with it: its plans and files, each year's report, and its correspondence with the assessment office. A new program head can see how the program's results have changed over time, which parts of the plan have improved, and what was agreed along the way.
The goal is not to make people interchangeable. A new program head brings their own judgement, and should. The goal is that they start from what the program already knows, instead of from a blank page.
