Running head: FINAL PAPER

Mark E. Campbell II
Final Paper
Western Michigan University

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2
Final Paper

In this paper, I will answer many questions as I reflect upon the completing the
assessment project for Educational Leadership course 6548. I worked with my colleague and
classmate Ariel Arnold with our assessment project for the department of Student Activities and
Leadership Programs (SALP) at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The
goal of our project was to analyze and see possible connections between student involvement and
retention at the university. This reflection shall be a brief synthesis of the numerous items that I
learned in class and what I learned while completing our assessment project. Also, I will provide
hindsight into how I would improve the outcome of our assessment project and the struggles that
happened during our assessment project. Lastly, each section will be divided into sets of
questions and my corresponding answers.
Question 1
In the first section, I will explore my answers to the following two questions: What was
the nature and purpose of the project? What did you know coming into the project? First, the
nature and purpose of our project was to examine and analyze a large data set of the department
of Student Activities and Leadership Programs (SALP) at Western Michigan University and
ultimately see a possible connection between student involvement and retention for students at
Western Michigan University. Also, as stated by our groups purpose form candidly the purpose
of our project is to analyze and organize the data associated with a series of events, identify the
point of entry for students attending events as well as characteristics of repeat and one-time
attendee and identify some of the students characteristics that participate in SALP events.
Furthermore, within this data set we had demographic information about hundreds of students
who attended SALP Events. .

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What did I know coming into the project? Initially, I had outlined a plan for us to
categorize the data, analyze the data for repetitive students who attended multiple events, and
ultimately see if there was a connection between the group of student who repeatedly attended
SALP events and their retention within Western Michigan University. I had a strong conjecture
that we could possibly compare the GPA scores of the repeat students against a sample size of
students who have not attended any SALP Events. As stated by Schuh and Upcraft (2001) our
project is a quantitative project in which, quantitative measures include gathering data from a
survey or other instrument and require much larger samples than qualitative methods (p.20).
The instrument that was used to collect all of this data was the Bronco IDs that when swiped sent
demographic information into a spreadsheet. Kate Bates, our staff liaison in SALP put the data
into spreadsheets and eliminated any confidential items from the original data. Also, this type of
data falls into the category of Institutional indicators (Keeling, Wall, Underhile, and Dungy
2008) and we did not provide any descriptive statistics with this data due to the time constraints
of the semester. The next section I will seek to answer the question: How does this project relate
to ACPA/NASPA competencies?
Question 2
How does this project relate to ACPA/NASPA competencies? This project directly
reflects two goals under the AER competencies section, and those two goals are: facilitate
appropriate data collection for system/department-wide assessment and evaluation efforts using
up-to-date technology and methods(ACPA & NASPA 2010). The second is to develop
effectively use assessment and evaluation results in determining the institutions, the divisions,
or the units accomplishment of its missions/goals, re-allocation of resources, and advocacy for
more resources (ACPA & NASPA 2010).

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This project was a very intensive data collection project, and in how we had to categorize
and organize a large data set that had not previously been organized before. To be honest, I am
happy that I now have the experience of categorizing a large data set into a functional data that
we could later analyze. Furthermore, because of this project I have asked my supervisor for
more raw assessment data sets and how I can organize and analyze these data sets to inform
future decisions within our department. For example, in my work in the Office of Student
Involvement for Kalamazoo College, our office has been collecting demographic information for
the supermajority of the events that we sponsor. We collect this data by having students swipe
their college ids into a wireless instrument that uploads their demographic information into a
spreadsheet.
One of those events is Monte Carlo, which is an event open to all the students at
Kalamazoo College and this event has traditionally had over 900 students. Recently, I have
examined this data for the past five years in which: I calculated our annual growth and projected
how many students would attend Monte Carlo this year. Because of my projections we have a
number that can be used to project how much food should be prepared for this event. In years
past, Kalamazoo College Dining Services has guessed at the amount of students attending and
we have had a surplus of food. Now, due to my calculations and analysis of the data we can
project a number of students who will attend Monte Carlo and cut down on wasted food. It is
with jubilation to see data inform our decisions in planning future events. Thus, I accomplished
my ACPA/NASPA competencies goals by using data collection to inform my departments goals.
As stated by (2010). The next section will address how the literature relates to the purpose of our
assessment project.
Question 3

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How does the literature relate to the project? There has been extensive research about the
effects of student involvement and engagement on college campuses across the nation. However,
for the purpose of this project we focused on two articles that directly related to the purpose of
our project. Those two articles were Astins Theory on Student Involvement (1984) and Jonathon
Fouberts The relationship between engagement in co-curriculrar activities and academic
performance: Exploring gender differences (2014). Astins article served as the capstone
document in how there is a relationship between student involvement and an increased
development of students in their leadership capabilities due to their involvement in co-curricular
activities. These involved students were more likely to feel a sense of belonging on their campus
and continue to graduate from their institution. Additionally, Zacherman and Fouberts article
served as the guide for our assessment project because his work showed a link between student
involvement and GPA scores (2014). Their study showed that students who participated in an
average on ten hours or less in co-curricular activities there GPA scores increased. However, he
found the inverse effect on students who spent more than an average of ten or more hours in cocurricular activities. These two articles were essential in our group in seeing if there was a link
between retention and students involvement in SALP events.
Question 4
The fourth question that I will answer will be: What improvements would you make if
you had it to do over? If I had the opportunity to start over on our assessment project, I would be
more vigilant in closing the loop in our assessment project. For example, I knew that our data set
was a large data set yet being an ambitious person I thought we could finish organizing the data
set and finally get to the work of solving the issue at hand such as seeing a possible link between
attending SALP events and retention at Western Michigan University. However, there were a

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few obstacles in the way, I underestimated the amount of time needed in the data collection and
organization of the data. Additionally, during the months of September and October I was
stricken with the shingles virus and I had limited energy outside of my primary task of keeping
up with my studies and my graduate assistantship.
Another item, I would change is suggesting to Kate Bates, our staff assessment project
liaison, would be my plan to run a statistical t test between students who attended SALP events
against students that did not attend any SALP events. That would require us to use the mean
average of the students who participated in the SALP events and compare it against a similar
sample size of students who did not attend SALP events. I would see if the t test is possible with
gpa scores because there are many variables to take into account when comparing the gpa scores
of another group. However, even if running a t test was not applicable to this situation I would
have decided to run another statistical test such as an ANOVA test. It would have been
interesting to see if there was any difference between the two groups because it is difficult to
tangibly measure involvement and its effects on students grades. Lastly, I would have asked
Kate for more direction concerning the reasoning between her thinking that there was a possible
link between the data we were provided and retention. This would have ensured that more
clearly that we were on the same page concerning her conjecture about a possible connection
between the activity in SALP events and retention at Western Michigan University.
Conclusion
In closing, I have enjoyed the time that I spent in my group working on this assessment
project. Although we had a daunting task of organizing and testing a link with retention with our
data, I am not discouraged that we did not complete our goal. This whole assessment project was
a learning process and I will take these skills with me as I do future assessment work. The skills

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that I learned during the project, I am already putting to use in my graduate assistantship work at
Kalamazoo College. This project has given me the confidence to tackle assessment work within
my own department and for those reasons I am thankful that I had this project. Ultimately, this
project has taught me about the politics of assessment and that regarding future assessment work
communication with all those involved in assessment work is essential.

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Works Cited

ACPA & NASPA Professional Student Affairs Competencies (2010)

Astin, A.W.(1984). Student involvement: A developmental theory for higher education. College
Student Personnel.
Keeling, R. P., Wall, A.F., Underhile, R., & Dungy, G. J. (2008). Assessment reconsidered:
Institutional Effectiveness for student success. NASPA.
Schuh, J. H. and Upcraft, M. L. (2000). Assessment practice in student affairs: An applications
manual.
Zacherman, A., Foubert, J. (2014). The relationship between engagement in co-curriculrar
activities and academic performance: Exploring gender differences. Journal of Student Affairs
Research and Practice, 51(2), 157-159.