The Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) has announced updated standards for New Student Orientation Programs (NSOP).
Last revised in 2013, this is a comprehensive revision with input from a diverse group of practitioners representing different types of institutions, geographical locations and diverse backgrounds and experiences.
In this revision, new standards and guidelines were added in several sections including emphasis on central role of NSOP on campus; ensuring that NSOP staff are utilizing current trends and management practices related to diversity, equity and inclusion; quality delivery of online programs; increased focus on assessment and program evaluation; more focus on quality of student staff selection and training; recognition of our role with parents and families; and references to minors on campus, program funding, and business continuity. NODA members have access to the revised standards in NODA Connect.
The CAS Self-Assessment Guides for all 46 sets of CAS Standards are available for purchase as downloadable electronic documents for the online CAS Store. These downloadable assessment workbooks include the standards and guidelines along with a series of “criterion measure” statements used to judge the level of program compliance with the standard. More products are available at the online CAS Store.
CAS First-Year Experience Cross Functional Framework
If you are involved in administering First-Year Experience Programs, you can check out the CAS FYE Cross Functional Framework. The CFF for First-Year Experiences (FYE) was produced by CAS, in partnership with the National Resource Center for First-Year Experiences and Students in Transition (NRT), and is essential to the work of people involved with first-year students, programs, and services. The CFF for FYE lays out a flexible, high quality framework for coordinating integrated and intentional campus-wide efforts to support first-year student success. Institutions looking for guidelines to structure partnerships with departments, arrange horizontal leadership, and develop buy-in and sustainability of first-year efforts can look to the CAS CFF for FYE as a trusted resource for best practice developed by experts and promoted by a reliable organization that, itself, is based on principles of cross-functional collaboration.
You can find the CAS FYE CFF at https://www.cas.edu/store_