Mijia Yang, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, has been selected to receive NDSU’s 2020 Award for Excellence in Course Assessment.

NDSU’s Office of Teaching and Learning sponsors the award to recognize individuals or small teams for creative and thorough methods of assessment in individual courses or a series of consecutive courses. The honor promotes sharing of outstanding assessment models with the NDSU community.

Yang received a $500 prize to use toward a professional development opportunity of his choice.

The Assessment Award Committee selected Yang because of the quality and variety of formative and summative assessments used in his CE 430: Timber and Formwork Design course, which focuses on inquiry- and information-based learning to improve student interaction with the instructor. His assessment plan was organized, focused, adaptable over time and demonstrated the continual flow between teaching, assessment and student learning.

Yang has been an Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) assessment coordinator for his department since 2017.

"As a department, we conduct course and program assessments every year. However, there is always some subjective nature in this process. Typically, student outcomes are clear for a program, but what assessment tools and data the faculty intend to use or collect needs to be well planned before the start of the class,” Yang said. “The Course Assessment Award strengthens our rationale in aligning the assessment tools with student outcomes and enhances our confidence in future course and program assessments."

Nominations for the 2021 NDSU Award for Excellence in Course Assessment will be accepted Jan. 1 through March 1, 2021.

As a student-focused, land-grant, research university, we serve our citizens.