Introduction & program demographics
Founded in 1952, Dominican College in the Rockland County with the mission of excellence, leadership and service, is an independent, four-year and master’s-level Liberal Arts College, that emphasizes high standards and attention to needs and potential of the individual student in their educational programs and services. Dominican College is located 17 miles north of New York City in Rockland County. It is chartered by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York and fully accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges. The College enrolls approximately 1600 students.

Dominican College offers an array of degree opportunities in liberal arts and sciences, business, and the professions on the undergraduate and graduate level. The College’s academic programs are organized within six divisions, each containing several disciplines. The academic divisions include Allied Health, Arts and Sciences, Business, Nursing, Social Sciences, and Teacher Education. The division of Teacher Education comprises of Childhood Education, Childhood Education/Students with Disabilities, Adolescence Education, and Adolescence Education/Students with Disabilities.

The College offers a graduate program in education, registered by New York State, leading to eligibility for New York State Certification in the following two areas:

• Teacher of Students Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired (BVI)
• Teacher of Students With Disabilities, including those with Multiple and Severe Disabilities (SWD)

The program’s 2 full-time faculty and four part-time instructors offer the graduate program to approximately 40 students. Most students in the Blindness/Visual Impairment program option are seeking an add-on certificate. The graduate programs are also an option for students currently holding a bachelor’s degree and initial teaching certificate in New York State.

The program is assessment-based, which means student learning outcomes are identified and assessment results are continually monitored with a view to improving instruction. The assessments, rooted in criterion-referenced rubrics, are both formative and summative. Finally, the program is field-based providing students with exposure to diverse settings for instruction. The key outcomes of the program are future teachers who can flexibly and caringly implement appropriate instructional strategies for different types of students.

Program’s claims
The program claims that its graduates can teach effectively and that in particular they possess twenty competencies aligned with the three TEAC quality principles and to the ten standard domain areas identified by the Council of Exceptional Children (CEC). Based on these linkages, the program claims that the graduates meet the TEAC quality principles.

Evidence supporting the claims
Evidence is organized by Quality Principle I to support the programs claim and is gathered from the following sources:

1. GPA’s including comparison of degree-seeking versus certification only students, grades in methods courses
2. Scores on the LAST license test for liberal education
3. Scores on the ATS-W license test as a measure of pedagogical knowledge
4. CST – Content Specialty Test as a measure of subject matter knowledge
5. Ratings of college supervisors on the 20 components of the twenty competencies and
6. Rating of cooperating teachers supervisors on the 20 components of the twenty competencies
7. Employer ratings of graduates competence (not available at this time)
8. Ratings of Alumni on the twenty competencies
9. Curriculum Mapping project that shows where each competency is introduced, covered, and finally mastered
10. Course Review and Evaluation matrix that shows how the competencies are assessed in each course and the results of those assessments
11. Two assessments of lesson plans (diagnostic and implementation phases) by the student, the student’s peers, and faculty

Reliability and validity of measures
The reliability and validity of some of the measures was investigated through the correlations among some of them and through an analysis of the significance of the differences in their outcomes. On the whole the analysis showed the measures were stable, although alumni rated themselves lower than the faculty rated the students in the program.

Results
The students for all 3 years 2003-2005 were rated between strong and superior by the faculty in subject matter knowledge. GPA was no less than 3.00/4.00. The mean of 255.46 on the LAST placed all 27 graduate students who took the test above the passing score of 220.

The passing rate on the ATS-W was also 100%, and the mean GPA for the methods courses was above 3.5 for all the three years 2003-2005 in both the program options. The supervisor ratings for the pedagogical knowledge of the students placed them in above strong to superior category. The Alumni rated themselves as close to strong.

The ratings by faculty and alumni ratings of caring teaching skill, multicultural perspective, technology and learning to learn were similar to those for pedagogical knowledge. Consistently, the supervisors rated the students as above strong or superior (4-5/5), while the alumni rated themselves as strong.

Interpretation of the results and plan for program improvement
The lower ratings by alumni were attributed to the challenges of the students’ full responsibility for visually impaired students and others with severe disabilities compared to their experiences in the controlled setting of the program.

Based on the results of their assessments, the program faculty claims its students are qualified, caring and competent. They plan to monitor closely the admissions process and certification requirements, examine the effectiveness of communication with faculty (particularly the adjunct faculty), continue to review the course evaluations, review the GPA’s of students for future reporting purposes, gather employer feedback, and increase the number of alumni responses.

Quality control
The internal audit consisted of specifying the mechanisms dealing with curriculum quality, faculty, recruiting and admissions, and student complaints. The faculty randomly selected six students who had completed the graduate program between 2003-2005 and followed their trail through the quality control system.

The internal audit found weaknesses in data storage, rating forms, and retrieval procedures. Students will be encouraged to complete the qualitative section of the end of the year course evaluation forms, for example. Collage supervisors need to be reminded to use the proper supervisory forms. The audit uncovered that the student health services were not always provided during posted hours.

Dominican College commitment
On the whole the internal audit found that the program conforms to the institutional norms with regard to the length of the curriculum, qualifications of the faculty, class sizes, office space, computers and professional development opportunities. They are more favorably placed with regard to budget per student credit hour, salaries, and smaller class sizes. The faculty members concluded that the institution is committed to the program.