WSU Program Assessment Grants

Goals

To promote best practices in program-level assessment of student learning outcomes and student services programs' goals, the Office of the Provost offers one-time funds to pilot, create, significantly revise, or effectively implement new or revised assessment instruments or processes, or to obtain professional development in program assessment.

The 2024 call for proposals is now open!

Since 2018, 64% of proposals have been funded, with an average award of $2500 per project.

Common project topics:
  • Developing more useful, practical assessment methods or instruments
  • Improving assessment processes to make them more practical and sustainable
  • Building capacity for assessment through professional development and colleague engagement
  • Aligning assessments with changes to specialized accreditation requirements

To get ideas for a project for your program, see the summary of current projects below, read reports of completed projects, watch the grant panel videos, or review examples of successful proposals. Contact WSU Sr. Director of Assessment Cathy Barrette with questions or for a consultation about your project ideas or draft proposal.


Congratulations to last year's WSU Program Assessment Grant awardees!

(Grant recipients: See the forms page for reporting templates.)

Based on recommendations from a review committee of faculty and staff with extensive experience in assessment, two projects received 2023 assessment grants:

Unit Project title and description Collaborating colleagues

College of Education

Initial and advanced certification programs in Teacher Education and Administrative/Organizational Studies

Validity and Reliability: Improving Assessment Data Outcomes

To address specialized accreditation requirements, the initial and advanced certification programs will (1) develop and implement a content validity evaluation process for rubrics and key course-based assignments used for learning outcomes assessment, (2) implement interrater reliability training on the rubrics for faculty and teacher supervisors, and (3) create videos to support onboarding and annual training.

Tami Augustine, Kathryn Roberts, Carla Harting, Karin Abel

College of Nursing

Assessment of a Graduate Certificate in Nursing Education (GCNE) Program

To build a sustainable, more robust assessment portfolio that elicits students’ and graduate perspectives on their preparation for teaching nursing and on the quality of clinical sites, faculty will develop and implement (1) an exit survey for graduating students, (2) a post-certification exam survey, (3) revised evaluation form for preceptors and clinical sites that incorporate their program learning outcomes, and (4) data sets to certification and employment rates to compare WSU program performance with other institutions’ nursing education programs.

Sally Villaseñor, Nicole Wheeler, Leanne Nantais-Smith, Elizabeth McQuillen