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Mission Statement: The Assessment in Higher Education (AHE) TIG seeks to provide a community of support for evaluators working within higher education. Our primary goals are to:

  • provide a forum for discussion and collaboration
  • promote professional development
  • enhance evaluation understanding and practice
  • and disseminate and discuss best practices

Within the specific context of higher education, the scope of the AHE TIG is to cover topics related to university, college and community college assessment and evaluation of programs, initiatives, and services for student and faculty populations.

 There is often confusion about TIGs in General so I am providing their general goal below:

Fellow TIGgers,

       As the newly elected Chair (we were calling it president... Oops) of the Assessment in Higher Ed TIG I looked up what AEA By-Laws say about TIGs and thought I would share what I learned.

Description of TIGs:

AEA members have diverse interests in different aspects of evaluation. To facilitate these interests, AEA created Topical Interest Groups (TIGs) as subgroups of the organization. AEA members may join up to five TIGs as a benefit of membership, and TIGs may only have AEA members as TIG members. The activity level of TIGs varies greatly from nearly dormant most of the year, to active participation in annual conference activities, to highly active year around with newsletters, web sites and working committee structures.

Roles: TIGs fulfill a variety of roles within AEA. TIGs:

  • Provide a structure and conduit for sharing knowledge about common evaluation interests.
  • Provide an alternative mechanism for communicating and disseminating professional information.
  • Provide a focal point for collecting and synthesizing the literature in a specific area of the profession.
  • Increase awareness of current research in that area and track its evolution. 
  • Nurture new members and help them feel connected to the organization. 
  • Serve as a showcase for the intellectual diversity of the organization. 
  • Generate and try innovative ideas. 
  • Serve as a conduit for outreach to related professional organizations. 
  • Provide an organized means of raising issues to the leadership of the association. 
  • Facilitate opportunities for collaborative research and evaluation. 
  • Create opportunities for mentoring (especially of young evaluators), evaluation-related training and enhancement of member services. 
  • Cultivate, foster and develop association leadership. 
  • Play a major role in annual conference programming and coordination, including: 
    • Serving as a primary vehicle for organizing and sponsoring conference sessions, through soliciting presentations and refereeing submitted proposals. 
    • Serving as strong supporters of and contributors to the Presidential Strand. 
    • Providing cohesion to and a vehicle for a natural clustering of similar topics for the conference program.
AEA by-laws mention of TIGs:

ARTICLE IX: TOPICAL INTEREST GROUPS
Section 1. Formation. Groups of members with similar interests may petition the Board to form a Topical Interest Group.

Section 2. Leadership and elections. Each Topical Interest Group must elect a Chair (or co-chairs) and a Program Chair (or Program Co-chairs). The same person may serve in both positions. The leaders must be elected for a term of no more than three years, renewable.