Kutztown University Assessment Grant Program

In 2008, the Office of Assessment at Kutztown University established a program for supporting research on assessment processes and practices by university faculty. Clearly, assessment and its findings are essential for maintaining high quality programs that are consistent with the University's mission, for highlighting program and University strengths, and for identifying areas for strategic change or improvement. Findings obtained through assessment enable the institution to determine how best to support needed changes. Assessment also enables us to evaluate the competence of graduates in terms of both the program's goals and those of the core curriculum and University mission. Ultimately, the purpose of assessment is continuous improvement in promoting student learning and development.

Assessment grants seek to encourage teaching faculty to engage in sound practices in assessing student learning outcomes. The funding can be used to support new initiatives and to strengthen ongoing assessment activities. A second goal is for these initiatives to generate models of assessment practices that can be used to inform other assessment efforts. Lastly, these grants may serve as “seed money” to support promising pilot projects or the research necessary to prepare externally competitive funding proposals.

The Request for Proposals for the most recent round of funding (deadline – March 1, 2012) can be found at: 2012 Kutztown University Assessment Grants.

Listed below are the recipients of KU Assessment grants for 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. Summaries of previously funded projects can be found by clicking on the hyperlinks.

2008

Assessment of traditional and technology-based methods across two sections of introductory statistics. PI: Greg Shelley, Department of Psychology.

Assessment of music in General Education. PIs: Willis Rapp & Valerie Trollinger, Department of Music.

Use of the curriculum map audit to improve the College of Education course alignment. PIs: Eloise Long & Phyllis Miller, Departments of Library Science and Elementary Education.

Assessment of student performance and results of the criminal justice comprehensive exams. PIs: Mahfuzul Khondaker & Pietro Toggia, Department of Criminal Justice.

Assessing undergraduate research experience in psychological science. PI: Derek Mace, Department of Psychology.

Assessing learning outcomes of undeclared students. PI: Gail Craig.

Effective, Sustainable, practical Assessment: Designing an Assessment program for the Rohrbach Library based on an approach developed by the Association of Research Libraries. Ruth Perkins, Krista Prock, & Karen Wanamaker Rohrbach Library.

2009

Improving student career portfolios with assessment rubrics. Anita Meehan, Department of Psychology.

The dissemination of the experiential learning project development plan. Therese Maskulka, Department of Marketing.

Using a standardized test to assess information literacy skills of incoming freshmen. Robert Flatley, Krista Prock, & Eloise Long, Rohrbach Library.

Kutztown University Frederick Douglass Institute Program Assessment. Maria Sanelli and Louis Rodriquez, Department of History.

Large Lecture General Education Health Classes: Evaluation of Core Assignment Data. John T. Raffin, Department of Human Kinetics.

2010

Developing and piloting an assessment plan for measuring student understanding in the calculus sequence. Paul Ache, Jennifer Gorman, Deborah Frantz, Deepak Khanna, & Celine Przydzial, Department of Mathematics.

Assessing the use of online homework systems in mathematics education. Yun Lu, Department of Mathematics.

2011

General Education Outcomes Assessment for Health and Wellness. Duane Crider, Frederick Garman, Dina Hayduk, Yongjae Kim & John Raffin, Department of Sport Management.

Assessing Fundamentals of Oral Communication (SPE 010): Standardizing Efforts for Curriculum, Improving Our Teaching, Supporting Our Students. Jay Baglia, Mary Bock, Mary Eicholtz, Ron Grapsy & Joe Harasta, Department of Speech Communication and Theatre.

Assessment of Critical Thinking for General Education. Joseph Jedwab and M. Ashraf Adeel, Department of Philosophy.

Assessment of Cross-Modal Perceptions of Music and Visual Art. Valerie Trollinger, Department of Music.

Assessment of Scientific Literacy among Kutztown University Students, Before and After Implementation of the New General Education Program. Angelika Antoni, Carol Mapes, Wendy Ryan, Dan Aruscavage and Nancy Butler, Department of Biology.