Grants in Higher Education

TEAGLE FOUNDATION GRANTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

GRANTS FOR THE SYSTEMATIC IMPROVEMENT OF STUDENT LEARNING AT LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES

Click here for other projects in Outcomes and Assessment.

May 2009

IMPLEMENTATION GRANTS

Bates College and Bowdoin College
Refining Quantitative Reasoning Curricula
Project Leader: Matt Cote

$148,780 over 38 months to enhance students' quantitative reasoning skills by conducting an assessment of their abilities, understandings, and dispositions in this area, and using the data generated from the assessment to develop and implement new quantitative learning components and pedagogical techniques.

Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College, and Swarthmore College
Beyond the Re-accreditation Self-Study: Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges Collaborate to Develop Best Practices for Effective and Sustainable Department-level Assessment of Student Learning | Project website
Project Leader: Mark Freeman

$149,947 over 36 months to support the intensive efforts of three selected departments on each campus in assessing a key learning goal that is central to their respective majors, and to provide opportunities for cross-institutional discussion on the administrative and logistical aspects of department-level assessment work.

Colgate University
The Core Curriculum and Student Learning in the Liberal Arts: Developing Systematic Improvement Strategies for a Program in Transition
Project Leader: Adam W. Burnett

$75,000 over 36 months to develop a sustainable strategy for assessing Colgate's Core Curriculum that builds on work already underway, encourages and uses new assessment models, provides data on how Core components are meeting stated goals, demonstrates impact of the Core on the overall educational experience, supports broad faculty involvement, and facilites the use of data to improve programs.

Connecticut College, Allegheny College, Colorado College, and Franklin Pierce University
Data into Action: Using Assessment Data with Faculty to Improve Student Learning
Project Leader: Michael Reder

$150,000 over 36 months to facilitate faculty ownership of student assessment data that institutions are already collecting, and to help systematize the ways in which faculty use that data to make decisions about enhancing curriculum, course design, and teaching to improve learning.

Randolph-Macon College
Systematic Improvements in Student Learning
Project Leader: Bill Johnston

$75,000 over 36 months to support academic departments in developing assessment cycles for student learning outcomes that meet the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) accreditation criteria.

Trinity College
Faculty-Driven Learning Assessment at Trinity College
Project Leader: Rena Fraden

$72,780 over 36 months to develop, implement, and institutionalize a faculty-driven learning assessment program for general education and for each academic major.

University of Colorado at Boulder and Colorado College
Assessment of Critical Thinking and Civic Engagement Strategies
Project Leader: Michael Grant

$148,514 over 36 months to assess the degree to which students' critical thinking skills are—or are not—strengthened by courses that incorporate civically engaged, community based approaches to learning.

Wittenberg University, Alma College, Augustana College, Gustavus Adolphus College, Illinois Wesleyan University, Luther College, and Washington & Jefferson College
Structuring Faculty Work Explicitly Around Student Learning
Project Leader: Kenneth W. Bladh

$149,800 over 36 months to understand and determine the extent to which the definitions of faculty work enable or restrain the use of "high-impact" pedagogical practices.

FIRST-STEP GRANTS

Spelman College and Smith College
The Spelman College / Smith College Collaborative: e-Folio as a Tool for Systematic Assessment of Student Learning
Project Leader: Myra Burnett

$75,000 over 24 months to create "learning communities" of faculty and administrators across multiple disciplines focused on electronic portfolios (as an assessment tool) and on learning outcomes associated with quantitative reasoning.

May 2008

IMPLEMENTATION GRANTS

College of Saint Benedict / Saint John's University
Systematic assessment: Building capacity and closing the loop
Project Leader: Ken Jones

$149,667 over 48 months to increase faculty expertise on assessment, create an institutionalized system of mentoring for good assessment, refine data sharing and communications structures related to assessment, and enhance oversight processes and structures to sustain the momentum for this work.

Earlham College
Creating and implementing ongoing general education learning goal assessment
Project Leader: Lyn Miller

$149,577 over 48 months to determine and implement procedures for assessing two of the college's ten general education learning goals each year on an ongoing five-year rotation.

Hampshire College, Bard College, Bennington College, Colorado College, New College of Florida, Smith College, and Wellesley College
Assessing the senior thesis to improve teaching and learning
Project Leader: Steve Weisler

$145,544 over 48 months to undertake a comparative assessment of senior theses leading to a series of workshops at which emerging data will be presented, shared, and used to guide the development and implementation of campus-based improvement plans suggested by the consortium's analysis.

Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Project Leader: Teresa Amott Reshaping faculty culture: Evidence-based transformation in student learning

$150,000 over 36 months to engage up to half of the colleges' permanent faculty in a three-year process that builds the foundation for a community of practice around each of the colleges' eight learning goals, and leads to curricular innovation, enhanced teaching, better advising, and measurable improvements in student learning.

Hope College
Systematic improvement of student learning
Project Leader: Carol Simon

$148,560 over 48 months to enhance students' writing skills and habits of curiosity and openness to new ideas by linking these goals to the evaluation of teaching, and by undertaking intensive faculty development efforts aimed at improving teaching effectiveness.

Juniata College
Systematic improvement in student learning via the establishment of a cost-effective scholarship of teaching and learning center
Project Leader: Jim Lakso

$149,500 over 36 months to foster a campus-wide, faculty-driven culture of scholarship of teaching and learning aimed at assessing and improving student learning.

Kalamazoo College
Transforming Kalamazoo College through multi-layered and systematic improvement of student learning
Project Leader: Paul Sotherland

$150,000 over 48 months to transform the college into a more vibrant teaching and learning environment by fostering a campus-wide and sustainable presence of the scholarship of teaching and learning that will build on an iterative and multi-layered approach to applying lessons gained through assessing student learning at the course, department, program, and college levels.

Middlebury College
Assessing student progression: Writing in the disciplines
Project Leader: Kathy Skubikowski

$143,800 over 48 months to undertake a three-year portfolio assessment that examines the connections between writing and intellectual community membership at three critical junctures in students' careers: the transition from high school, the entry into a major, and the pursuit of a senior capstone experience.

Occidental College
Academic support assessment project
Project Leader: Eric Frank

$150,000 over 36 months to determine and systematically assess how academic support units (e.g. centers for teaching and learning, advising offices, offices of religious and spiritual life, undergraduate research centers, etc.) contribute to students' total learning experience.

Skidmore College
Writing in the majors: Increasing student engagement through writing | Project website
Project Leader: Beau Breslin

$150,000 over 48 months to promote student learning by teaching and assessing the conventions of writing in each discipline.

St. Lawrence University
Developing a process model for systematically assessing and improving liberal education: The St. Lawrence University diversity requirement as case study | Project Website
Project Leader: Eve Stoddard

$150,000 over 48 months to develop a systematic process to assess and improve learning outcomes around the college's goal of deepening students' ability to critically engage notions of sameness and difference.

St. Olaf College, Carleton College, and Macalester College
CALL and response: Small-scale innovations informing large-scale improvements in student learning | Project Website
Project Leader: Jo Beld

$150,000 over 36 months to improve student proficiency in making effective arguments by using a "demonstration project" model for innovation and improvement.

Whittier College
Systematic improvement in student learning
Project Leader: Lisa Bortman

$150,000 over 36 months to develop an assessment data management system (DSpace software) that will provide an accessible, query-able, and relational set of institutional databases for use by individual faculty, as well as academic and administrative departments. The College will test the system's usability by addressing two areas of concern: improving under-represented minority students' performance in math, science, and writing gateway courses, and measuring the impact of community-based learning initiatives on student learning and engagement.

FIRST-STEP GRANTS

Randolph-Macon College
Systematic improvements in student learning
Project Leader: Bill Johnston

$25,000 over 12 months (planning grant).

Trinity College
Faculty-driven learning assessment at Trinity College
Project Leader: Thomas Mitzel

$25,000 over 12 months (planning grant).