Assessment at WMU

Office of Institutional Effectiveness
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5253 USA
(269) 387-0399

2018-19 Assessment Fellows Grant Recipients

Since the academic year 2003-04, the Office of Assessment and Undergraduate Studies (OAUS) working in collaboration with the University Assessment Steering Committee, has offered financial support for faculty and staff at WMU who would like to pursue projects pertaining to outcomes assessment. Since the inception of this program, the OAUS has provided grants to 72 recipients, including the current recipients for 2018-19.

The grant projects last for one year culminating in a poster presentation shared at the annual WMU Assessment in Action Conference. The grant recipients meet once a month with the Associate Provost for Assessment and Undergraduate Studies to have conversations that revolve around different topics of interest pertaining to outcomes assessment. The group is modeled to be like a learning community and grant recipients have shared that they enjoy the time to talk with colleagues to discuss their projects, receive feedback from other cohort members and to have spirited discussions surrounding different topics in the field of assessment.

Many of the grant recipients have presented on their assessment work at conferences, published articles in journals or other scholarly publications and some have even continued to develop their projects long after the grants have expired. In one case, a past recipient went on to secure a $2,000,000 grant to continue to work on and develop the project further.

Below is a list of the grant recipients, including the titles of their projects, for the 2018-19 academic year:

  • William Charland, (Frostic School of Art), "Assessing Creative Growth in the Frostic School of Art".
  • Adrienne Fraaza, (Office of Student Transitions), "CliftonStrengths for Students: Developing Engaged and Thriving Students through Strengths Awareness and Development".
  • Pablo Gomez (Electrical and Computer Engineering) and Edmund Tsang (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering), "Collaborative Learning for High Voltage Engineering Education".
  • David Schuster, (Physics), "An Objectives-Mastery System for Course Operations and Assessments".
  • Ramona Lewis and Casey Dornhecker, (Education Leadership, Research and Technology), "Creating a Holistic Assessment Process for the HESA: Performance Driven Leadership (PDL) Electronic Portfolio".
  • Lisa Singleterry (Bronson School of Nursing) and Susan Caulfield, (School of Interdisciplinary Health Programs), "Assessing the Assessors: Potential Barriers to Engage Writing Assessment".

Congratulations to the current cohort of grant recipients! We look forward to learning more about their projects in the spring when they will be sharing a poster at the 10th Annual WMU Assessment in Action Conference on Friday, March 15, 2019. Please mark your calendars and plan to join us for the conference to participate in a day of celebration, collaboration, education, and information surrounding outcomes assessment. To view previous conference proceedings, click here.

If you interested in obtaining a grant, please go to this site for more information. We will be accepting applications for the 2019-20 academic year in the spring, which are normally due by the end of April. Look for more information to come in the coming months. For questions, contact Karen Stokes Chapo: @email.