Welcome to the 2025 issue of Assessment Review, featuring articles on assessment & AI, challenges in the assessment cycle, and curiosity as a motivator in Student Affairs Assessment!

Dear Colleagues,

The members of the Editorial Team at The Assessment Review are very excited to bring you our 2025 issue! We present three original articles covering a range of topics of great current relevance to assessment practitioners around CUNY, the United States, and indeed, the world!

First, Dr. Eliana Elkhoury’s article, “The Seven Waves of Assessment and GenAI,” provides an intuitive and helpful framework for understanding higher education’s still-developing reactions to, and interactions with, generative AI. Elkhoury emphasizes the emerging nature of higher education’s reaction to AI, and suggests a number of areas to keep our eyes out for in the future, including further study of the role of AI in shaping the learning experience and even brain development.

The second article, “Using Curiosity as a Motivational Technique for Engaging in Student Affairs Assessment,” by Dr. Rebecca Goldstein and Dr. Jennifer L. Bloom, identifies a number of barriers to Student Affairs assessment as well as characteristics of a positive culture to foster buy-in and engagement. The authors provide evidence to support their hypothesis that encouraging practitioners’ natural curiosity about student outcomes can successfully produce more effective evaluation processes across Student Affairs.

Finally, in his article, “The Assessment Cycle in Higher Education: A Critical Appraisal,” Dr. Jarek Janio lays out the many challenges facing the student learning outcomes assessment cycle and its role in higher education accreditation, administration, and planning. Janio suggests a number of reforms, including clearer learning outcomes, flexible methodology, more student involvement, and greater resource allocation.

We hope you will find the new batch of assessment scholarship engaging, exciting, informative, and useful!

This issue marks the end of the term of the current group of senior editors for The Assessment Review – Joel Bloom, Melissa Sultana, and Christopher Lee. We are proud to have been able to serve the CUNY and broader assessment communities, and are excited to see what comes next, for the Review, and for us!

Cheers,
Co-Senior Editor, Joel Bloom

On behalf of The Assessment Review Editorial Team