The attributes that students need to succeed in college and in their careers are not always neatly bundled as “skill sets” like writing or critical thinking. In addition to students’ academic capacities and physical health, success depends upon qualities like resilience, self-confidence, agency, and empathy. These attributes, often called mindsets, speak to an individual’s personal and interpersonal development and, more globally, their well-being. To discover the impacts on students’ mindsets and skill sets during the pandemic, AAC&U is partnering with Columbia University’s Global Psychiatric Epidemiology Group (GPEG) research team to support the federally funded National COVID-19 Higher Ed Student Impact Study examining the effects of COVID-19 on student well-being, decision-making, and academic and life outcomes.

This discussion with President Heather Perfetti and Senior Vice President Christy L. Faison from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education is the second in a series of brief video interviews with leaders of the seven regional accrediting bodies in US higher education. To get an accreditor’s view of assessment, we asked each leader what they have been hearing and thinking about during the pandemic related to two critical areas: the campus climate toward assessment at their member institutions and what expectations the accreditors have for useful evidence of student learning.