ABSTRACT
Student success is a key mission for higher education institutions. As the college-going population continues to grow and become more diverse, it is imperative for institutions to provide resources and learning opportunities for students from underrepresented backgrounds. One way that institutions can better serve and support the success of students from underrepresented backgrounds is through student success programs. Student success programs aim to increase retention, persistence, and graduation, among other student outcomes, through a variety of strategies, such as tutoring, mentoring, academic and social skills development, internships, leadership training, and counseling. An essential component of any student success program is continuous assessment. Continuous assessments can help the program’s stakeholders understand the program’s context, role, strengths, and weaknesses. This information can be used to make midcourse improvements to the program to further advance student outcomes. By evaluating the program and progress of student outcomes, stakeholders and practitioners can learn effective strategies that can be applied or scaled to other campus programs to further improve student success. The importance of evaluation in the success of a program has been increasingly acknowledged. Policymakers, funders, and stakeholders are especially interested in evaluation outcomes because they want to ensure that their commitments are being used effectively to positively affect youth, and they want to understand where they should further invest their resources. For example, the U.S. Department of Labor has provided billions of dollars to higher education institutions to improve career and technical education programs and prepare students for the workforce through its Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program (U.S. Department of Labor, 2011). This grant requires applicants to demonstrate the evidence base for their program and hire a third-party evaluator to rigorously assess the program’s impact on students’ academic and employment outcomes and provide feedback to grantees to improve the programs. This TAACCCT grant program is not unique. Whether government funded or privately funded, growing numbers of higher education grant programs require an evaluation component, and the rigor and scale of the evaluations required seems to be only increasing.
