We realize low loss, single-mode polymer waveguides and microring resonators in SU-8 (MichroChem) using direct E-beam lithography. We also present and demonstrate a novel and simple approach for accurately extracting the propagation loss in the waveguides as well as the coupling between the waveguide and the microring. The demonstrated approach is insensitive to the I/O coupling efficiency to the optical chip and does not require any pre-calibration of the experimental setup. © The Authors. All rights reserved [DOI: 10.2971/jeos.2006.06007]