Led by Associate Provost and SACS Liaison Robert Nelsen, the Academic Assessment team works with every degree and certificate program at UTD to determine the degree to which all programs and courses mesh with good educational practice and the mission and goals of the University. Simply, academic programs offer a slate of student learning outcomes (SLO’s) that should be the result of each student’s participation in the academic major and course work. These SLO’s require various measures (or assessments) to determine the degree to which students meet those outcomes or goals. While academic assessment focuses on samples of students rather than all students, good research methodology requires that sampled students are representative of the students within each program.