Research Assessment of center for the advancement of pharmaceutical education (CAPE) outcomes in a capstone course of an accelerated pharmacy program Jennifer L. Donovan, PharmD*, Abir O. Kanaan, PharmD, Matthew A. Silva, BCPS Pharm, Evan Horton, PharmD, Cheryl Abel, PharmD, Paul P. Belliveau, PharmD Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Worcester, MA 01608. Abstract Objective: Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education endorses assessment of achievement of learning outcomes in pharmacy programs. This is a process that is aided by requiring that course outcomes align with student learning outcomes (SLOs). We sought to assess student achievement of multiple outcomes that have been linked to a senior capstone course. Materials and Methods: SLOs were applied to a capstone course that requires a professional poster presentation. Faculty assessment of SLOs achievement and students’ self-assessment were completed using specific evaluation tools. Successful achievement was defined as an overall score of 70%. Results: There were 158 students assessed by faculty; 92 students completed self-evaluations. Faculty assessment found that students completed 85% of the course evaluation items (70% expected, p  0.001), with student self-assessment consistent with faculty assessment. Conclusions: The assessment methods in this course provided insight into how well our pharmacy curriculum prepares students for performance of tasks that are essential attributes for a graduating pharmacist. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Assessment; Outcomes; Pharmacy Two pivotal reports, “Involvement in Learning” and the “Integrity in the College Curriculum,” have questioned the quality of higher education and challenged educators to accept a greater degree of responsibility for the quality of their instruction. 1,2 These reports led to a mandate that all federally-funded accrediting organizations include evidence of institutional outcomes in their criteria for accreditation. 3 Consequently, the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Ed- ucation (ACPE) adopted the Self-Study Template and Eval- uation Form to document assessment activities, curricular effectiveness, and institutional outcomes. This template, an assessment plan to meet organizational and student learning outcomes (SLOs), provides a general self-study framework while giving each institution the ability to customize its assessment plan. ACPE uses the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy’s Center for the Advancement of Pharmaceu- tical Education (CAPE) professional competencies and outcome expectations as the foundation for pharmacy programs to operationalize the SLOs required by phar- macy graduates. 4 Previous studies have examined achievement of individual outcomes in both the didactic and experiential settings. 5-10 Programs that have pub- lished assessments of multiple outcomes have done so within the context of implementation of an outcomes- based curriculum. 11-16 These assessment efforts address * Correspondence to: Jennifer L. Donovan, PharmD, Associate Professor of Pharmacy Practice, Massachusetts College of Phar- macy and Health Sciences, 19 Foster Street, Worcester, MA 01608. E-mail: jennifer.donovan@mcphs.edu Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning 3 (2011) 299 –306 http://www.pharmacyteaching.com 1877-1297/11/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cptl.2011.07.003