2021-2022 Assessment Initiative Awards

In an effort to support continuous improvement, the Assessment Initiative Award program provides financial and professional support to cover some of the costs of conducting assessment studies or program evaluations.

The award program provides five awards of $2,000 each to individuals or teams proposing projects that will assess outcomes at the program or department/school/unit level (no single course assessment proposals will be considered). The application materials (proposal narrative, itemized budget, and supporting letter) will be evaluated by members of the Assessment Advisory Council.

For more information, see the guidelines and contact us if you have any questions. Application materials are due at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, October 22, 2021, and can be emailed to University Assessment Services at assessment@IllinoisState.edu.

Recent award recipients include:

Informing faculty in the Department of Politics and Government how best to design and implement their future online courses to assess the extent to which indirect evidence of student learning varies by course modality and by student characteristics.
Evaluating the impact of the Voices of Discovery program offered by Student Counseling Services in reducing racial colorblindness and increasing group cohesion and appreciation for diversity to inform programming and the provision of clinical and outreach services offered to diverse students.
Developing and piloting a multi-semester assessment of the English Teacher Education program to better incorporate existing program-level assessments and benefit multiple stakeholders including students, faculty, clinical mentors, university supervisors, and cooperating teachers.
Designing online dashboards to integrate multiple direct and indirect measures of student learning in the Recreation and Park Administration program to assist in reviewing and interpreting this information and then using this information for program improvement and disseminating it to program stakeholders.
Administering focus groups to supplement survey responses regarding student learning and better assess the efficacy of student participation in one-day, co-curricular community service/service learning experiences through the Center for Civic Engagement.