One thing I’ve learned about my position in the first week is that assessment is a much larger part of my role than I had initially thought. I knew there would be a significant amount of assessment in my portfolio, but just how much and how central to the role it was, I did not grasp at first.

I’m thrilled by this.

I have a lot to learn about best practices in curricular and program assessment, and that learning is much of the work I have set myself for this summer. But I am quite excited to develop new processes that can help the Div School reflect upon its goals and how it is–or is not–meeting them.

I recognize that my excitement may seem odd to many of my colleagues in higher education in general and graduate theological education in particular. As a dear friend and colleague at another institution said, “Assessment is dumb. It makes education into a commodity.” There’s some truth to this, for sure; assessment can easily become a way to quantify the unquantifiable, to rank the unrankable.

But I believe, perhaps naively, that assessment in theological education, when done correctly, can be understood as a type of communal spiritual discipline. To be clear, when I speak of assessment here, I’m speaking of curricular and program assessment, the regular practices of review by which an institution seeks to safeguard the quality and effectiveness of its work in student education and formation. And by spiritual discipline I mean something akin to the Ignatian Examen or other historical practices whereby Christians, both individually and communally, set before themselves the work they have done in the past day, week, month, year, etc., so that they can do the hard work of confessing where they may have fallen short and of recognizing the divine grace and human cooperative work that have lead to success, all with the goal of pursuing growth in our mutual endeavors.

Now, I may be naive in this viewpoint, but I’m not so naive as to believe that any and all assessment practices naturally have this effect. Many so-called best practices are nothing more than capitalist corporatism encroaching upon the world of education and formation for suspect–and, I dare say, even sinful–ends. But I firmly believe that these malpractices are no reason to throw out the notion of healthy assessment altogether.

I will not pretend to know yet what actual best practices for assessment of Divinity School curricula and programs looks like. I do know that my predecessor and colleagues have already done great work beginning to imagine the possibilities; but there is more work to be done. For now, let me just say that “assessment as spiritual discipline” is the ethos I hope to model in my new role and one I hope to invite my staff and faculty colleagues into through processes that aim to be life-giving and renewing.