The annual Division of Student Affairs Assessment Symposium highlights department assessment efforts and ongoing projects from a variety of disciplines and stages in the assessment process. The event features presentations, workshops, and poster sessions.

This year’s Division of Student Affairs Assessment Symposium will take place on April 1, 2025.

Our theme for 2025 is Efficiency and Innovation. Posters and breakout sessions will highlight efficient and innovative assessment efforts and ongoing projects within the division.

Keynote Speaker 

Relationship-centered assessment: Doing and interpreting student affairs work that matters 

This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. Rachel A. Smith!  

Rachel A. Smith is an associate professor in student affairs and higher education in the School of Education at Iowa State University, and she currently serves as the school’s Director of Graduate Education. She has published research in leading higher education journals that relies on social network analysis and mixed methods to examine the roles higher educational institutions play in organizing student relational patterns and their associations with educational outcomes. This work has focused on learning communities, student relationship formation during the pandemic, and graduate student wellbeing. She teaches master’s and doctoral courses on research and assessment methods, undergraduate student success, and student affairs administration. She earned her PhD and MS in Higher Postsecondary Education from Syracuse University and holds a BA in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.