Assessment is critical to the sustainability of our public events. As is detailed in the Great Debate section, publicity is important, but high-quality assessment is what communicates value to central administration. Assessment is also what tells us particular parts of an event are working while other areas require improvement. The assessment results we have are a collaborative effort between our own department of institutional research, the FYE program, and Dr. Lori Weber from Political Science. Collectively we have controlled for demographic variables from SAT scores to race and identified participation in PSP programs as an independent variable. We encourage you to collect data from the earliest parts of your PSP program. Even if you cannot analyze the data right away, it can still be useful later on.
The PSP Summary is the document we prepared for a presentation at the recent American Democracy Project (ADP) conference. This document summarizes the most dramatic results of the Town Hall and the Great Debate. These results include dramatic increases in retention from year one to year two for first-year students and statistically significant increases in civic engagement and academic engagement.
The THM Infographic summarizes some amazing persistence results for the Town Hall Program. These results reveal that the Town Hall has dramatic impacts on persistence beyond the 2nd year. We are learning that PSP has an impact throughout the college career of students