Grant Summary
$22,895 over 12 months. Three Catholic colleges—College of the Holy Cross, Assumption College, and Saint Anselm College—will partner to assess how effectively their undergraduate students acquire and refine certain moral, ethical, civic, and/or spiritual values that lie at the heart of their institutional missions. More specifically, they will assess the extent to which they are successful in providing opportunities—especially academic ones—that encourage the development of these values in their students. A six-member steering committee will lead the project and will involve those individuals and committees on each campus who are responsible for ongoing assessment activities. They will examine key written documents in which these moral and spiritual goals are outlined, and the role played by campus culture in articulating them. Each campus, and then the group as a whole, will identify relevant curricular and co-curricular activities and support students' acquisition or refinement of these goals. They will examine and inventory relevant assessment data collected from instruments used by all three campuses such as the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), as well as consider adaptations of such instruments. Based on what this research indicates, the collaborative will develop a program to assess students' moral and spiritual development that can be adopted by other liberal arts colleges.