Alma College Shares Teagle Foundation Grant for Assessment
A consortium of Midwest highly selective liberal arts colleges that includes Alma College has been awarded a $300,000 grant from the Teagle Foundation of New York City designed to measure civic engagement and enhance their students’ educational experience.
The grants are part of Teagle's Outcomes and Assessment Initiative, which promotes institutional and faculty collaboration in order to strengthen teaching and learning. The grant was awarded to the consortium of Alma College (MI), Augustana College (IL), Gustavus Adolphus College (MN), Illinois Wesleyan University (IL), Luther College (IA), and Wittenberg University (OH) for their project “Measuring Intellectual Development and Civic Engagement through Value Added Assessment.” Augustana will administer the consortium’s grant distributed over three years.
The research project attempts to assess the consortium colleges’ common claim that a liberal arts curriculum combined with extra- and co-curricular activities transforms students intellectually and prepares them for lifelong engagement in their communities. Members will explore the skills central to the liberal arts: writing, critical thinking/analytical reasoning, and civic engagement.
With curricula varying significantly among the consortium, the research can measure which approaches to teaching core values have the greatest student gains. The assessment project will use national surveys and institutional resources and bring consortium faculty together annually to evaluate student learning and growth. Volunteer activities will be tracked and awareness of ethical and social issues will be gauged to explain the relationship between intellectual gains and civic engagement and which institutional approaches to service learning work best.
The Teagle Foundation awarded $2 million to more than 50 colleges throughout the United States divided into six consortia as part of their assessment initiative.
The Teagle Foundation was established in 1944 by Walter C Teagle, longtime president and later chairman of the board of the Standard Oil Company, now Exxon Mobil Corporation. The foundation is committed to providing intellectual and financial leadership for the promotion and strengthening of liberal education.
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Posted: Fri, July 8th, 2005 at 2:52PM
