CARE

Center for Assessment, Research, and Evaluation


Lilac Hall 150

18111 Nordhoff St.

Northridge, CA 91330-8463

Phone: (818) 677-8500
Fax: (818) 677-8504

Send email

Submit a Project

Experience & Clients

Below is a selection of our current and completed projects.

Current Projects

Enabling Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity (EPIIC) – (Funded by the National Science Foundation)

  • Client: Seattle University, St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, Utah Tech University, St. Francis, California State Polytechnic University-Humboldt. PIs and Staff– Amit Shukla (Seattle University), Peter Rowan (Seattle University), Matt Musel (St. Mary’s), Michael Ratajczyk (St. Mary’s), Cheryle Caplinger (Utah Tech), Aaron Davis (Utah Tech), Kyle Wells (Utah Tech), Timothy Miller (St. Francis), Rachel Wagner (St. Francis), and Pete Skoner (St. Francis). Borbola Mazzag (Cal Poly Humboldt), Elizabth Eschenbach (Cal Poly Humboldt), Sherrene Bogle (Cal Poly Humboldt).
     
  • Project Info: The EPIIC project, which involves the collaboration between 5 institutions of Higher Education (IHE), aims to facilitate growth in STEM fields by delivering broad, equitable learning opportunities and resources to students, as resources to engage in science related activities are often disproportionately distributed. The 5 institutions involved in this project are committed to serving their communities and their undergraduate students by providing novel ways to increase STEM growth and opportunities. Methods to do so include facilitating workshops to raise awareness of available internship opportunities, guiding capstone projects, creating centers that boost outreach efforts to community partners, engaging with faculty across campus departments to collaborate on opportunities, hosting events to encourage networking, and much more!
     

CARE role: The CARE team works with each institution collectively and separately to assist with the research and evaluation plans. As the overarching evaluator for the program, CARE provides insight on survey building and distribution, meets with members of each institution monthly to evaluate and provide guidance on activities, and provides an annual report that summarizes the activities that took place within each IHE.
 

The Origins of Statistical Variation of Strength in Micropatterned Adhesive Contacts – (Funded by the National Science Foundation)

  • Client: California State University, Northridge – College of Engineering and Computer Science // Mechanical Engineering. PI – Jamie Booth
     
  • Project Info: The goal of this project is to help promote and maintain student engagement in mechanical engineering and build STEM research capacity by utilizing research on statistical variation in synthetic micropatterned adhesive contacts. The research aims to determine, characterize, and predict the adhesive strength of microstructured subcontracts subject to variation in defect characteristics. To increase student engagement, the PI aims to increase the volume of independent research opportunities to current and incoming mechanical engineering students through inquiry-based learning experiences.
     
  • CARE role: CARE serves as the external evaluation team and works closely with the project PI and stakeholders to conduct a rigorous evaluation on the project’s outcomes and implementation processes. The evaluation services include providing guidance on project objectives, activities, and assessments, as well as creating summative evaluation reports.

Building Student Success in Assistive Technology – (Funded by National Science Foundation)

  • Client: California State University, Northridge – College of Engineering and Computer Science // Computer Science. PI – Li Liu
     
  • Project Info: The goal of this project is to broaden STEM participation and increase the STEM professional identity through authentic learning experiences, specifically for underrepresented groups. This project works to create a sustainable way for students from various majors and colleges at CSUN to engage in STEM and increase readiness for STEM careers through interdisciplinary learning.
     
  • CARE role: The CARE team works closely with the PI by providing both evaluation and assessment services. Specifically, the team assist with creating survey and interview questions, data analysis, and providing assistance with program and activity planning. The team also provides a summative, outcome evaluation for the PI after each phase of the project.

Community Public Health Teams Project

  • Client: California State University, Northridge – Institute for Community Health & Wellbeing, Strength United, and County of Los Angeles – Public Health
     
  • Project Info: The Institute for Community Health and Wellbeing is contracted with Strength United to train and support community health workers (CHWs) to provide needs assessments to communities within Los Angeles. CHWs conduct home visits by go door-to-door to connect community members, specifically those in low-income and immigrant communities, to resources that exist within the Los Angeles County area.
     
  • CARE role: The CARE team provides data organization and analysis support for this wide-scale project, as well as working collaboratively with members from the CSUN geography department to provide assistance with developing maps for this project.

Completed Projects

  • Client: California State University, Northridge Office of Research and Graduate Studies (ORSP). PIs –Carrie Saetermoe and Crist Khachikian.
  • Project Info: The Scholar Academies are a collection of faculty development programs designed to increase the quantity and strengthen the quality of extramural proposals and to encourage the infusion of research into curricula. Each academy will include a number of experienced faculty coaches who have the desire to work closely with colleagues within or across disciplines.  Faculty scholars and coaches commit to regular meetings to discuss various aspects of grantsmanship and research-intensive curricula and to work on developing proposals or modifying programs.
  • CARE role: CARE staff worked as the external evaluation team conducting surveys, focus groups and one-on-one interviews with both coaches and trainees in order to improve the program and report program successes to the project PIs.

  • Client: California State University, Northridge Office of Research and Graduate Studies (ORSP). PI - Associate Vice President Crist Khachikian.
  • Project Info: This project consisted of the evaluation of the 4500 grants database entries collected by the office of Research and Graduate Studies (RGS) over the past 15 years at California State University, Northridge (CSUN). The current database consists of pre-populated fields concerning grant proposals that were submitted by CSUN faculty and includes limited information about the proposals and the principal investigator (e.g., granting agency, PI name, department, amount requested, award amount, etc.).
  • CARE role: CARE staff worked with staff from the Office of Research and Graduate Studies to conduct an evaluation and analysis of their grants database.  Project goals included identifying appropriateness/completeness of database fields, combining the grants database with databases from CSUN’s Office of Institutional Research and analyses of the grants database information (e.g., by agency type (federal, state, local, etc.), college, gender, ethnicity, and number of years the PI has worked at CSUN). 

CARE

Center for Assessment, Research, and Evaluation


Lilac Hall 150

18111 Nordhoff St.

Northridge, CA 91330-8463

Phone: (818) 677-8500
Fax: (818) 677-8504

Send email

Submit a Project

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