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Melissa K. Recht
The University of Dayton Women’s Center is an identity center located in Alumni Hall at
the University of Dayton. The center is staffed by a director, a program coordinator, and a part-
time administrative assistant. Even with a modest budget and a small staff, the center manages to
host a variety of events and activities throughout the year that help them achieve one of their
goals, that of educating and empowering the community. Their mission statement clearly
articulates that one of their roles as an identity center at a university is furthering important social
and gender justice issues, which can be accomplished by well-planned and executed educational
opportunities that can provide students with new knowledge and give them actionable steps to
further their own growth and create change on campus and on a wider stage. Reading the mission
statement brings into focus what kind of assessment would benefit this identity center (2018):
The mission of the University of Dayton Women’s Center is to foster a diverse and
equitable community by advocating for social and gender justice, assessing and
addressing campus climate, and providing resources and support for all. Guided by our
commitment to justice, inclusivity, and innovation, we: serve all students, faculty and
staff; provide a safe space to support, educate and empower; and champion balanced and
A center with such lofty and perhaps difficulty to achieve goals would benefit from an
assessment plan that would track the number of attendees at events, and then dig into the student
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learning outcomes achieved by listening, learning, and digesting the information presented.
Because gaining the knowledge is only one piece of the puzzle, the assessment should attempt to
discover if students act upon or are changed by the knowledge. This would best be accomplished
by an assessment that would encourage students to speak openly, examine their experiences, and
reflect upon the impact of their engagement with those activities. According to staff there, the
Center does do some tracking of event attendance and sends out surveys, and this proposed
To that end, this assessment plan would use three types of assessments: simple tracking
of attendees at events by card swipe (as opposed to the system currently used by the staff there, a
check-in sheet), a post-event survey using a Likert scale, and a focus group made up of students
who had attended two or more events and signaled through the survey that they had experienced
engagement with the content. All of these assessments have multiple benefits. All three are easy
to prepare and administer, cost very little, and can be used together to gain holistic insight into
this identity center. There are also limitations to these (or any) assessments, as they do not
necessarily delve deeply into specific problems or provide a complete overview of the center in
the way that other assessments might. Other limitations exist, including working with a fairly
small sample size (the Women’s Center hosts only a certain number of events, and attendance is
often limited to those with an inclination to support the Center or an interest in the types of topics
covered). However, for the purposes of providing a meaningful student learning experience and
implementing ideas that support the mission and vision of the Center, these assessments seem
Stakeholders
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Before creating and implementing an assessment plan, it is important to first consider the
stakeholders. As Schuh & Upcraft (2000) emphasize, the politics of assessment must be
considered, planned for, and addressed if an assessment is to go well (or to go anywhere at all).
This includes consideration of stakeholders and how their wants and needs will be impacted by
an assessment. It would be important to first consider the students utilizing the center. Tracking
the growth and personal development that the Center may cultivate in students is the most
important goal of the assessment. The students are the core reason the Center exists and thrives--
their presence at events and within the physical Center should be tracked, assessed, and
considered when making decisions about where funding should go, how events should be
handled, and even what the strategic goals of the Center should be. The results of an assessment
Additional stakeholders are the staff working in the Women’s Center, faculty and staff
who also use the center, administrators, families of students, donors, alumni, and community
partners. The staff who work at the Center could use assessment results to be guiding factors for
daily planning, budgeting, future growth, and even future iterations of the Center’s name, vision,
and mission. Assessments could also affect their staffing levels and space considerations. If they
face a daily stream of students wanting to spend time in the Center, attend events, and even just
use the staff as de facto counselors, an assessment can provide concrete numbers to back up
Other stakeholders would also need to be considered as well. Alumni donors who felt a
strong affiliation with the Women’s Center may want to weigh in on future plans for expansion
or potential changes, and would perhaps benefit from knowing exactly what current students
need and want out of an identity center. Others at the university, like faculty and staff, have an
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unique set of needs that may also need to be addressed. For example, they would likely attend
very different events and utilize the Center in quite different ways than students would. Taking
into consideration how often patrons who are not students use the Center and its services and
attend its events would help determine how much of a budget should be directed at non-students.
Tangentially, community partners who work with the center to provide or receive charitable
donations would be affected by potential funding or space changes that could occur after an
assessment.
Assessment Methods
Basic tracking at events will be a starting point. Students will be asked to supply name
and email at sign-in table for each event, and will be asked to swipe in using their ID. Since
student can receive points at certain events that accumulate for housing preferences, the swipe
card system would be a valuable asset. Swiping in logs their points, which means students will
be more likely to attend events and log attendance. Following the event, students will be sent a
survey with demographic data and questions about the impact of the event. The event survey will
use a Likert scale and multiple open-ended questions to find out how successful each event is at
accomplishing the goals for the specific event and for furthering the mission of the Women’s
Center. A focus group of students who have attended at least two events and have responded to
the survey will be conducted at the end of the semester. Students will be encouraged to share
how the events have impacted their lives. In addition, a small focus group of faculty and staff
patrons of the Center will be interviewed. This will help provide balance and supply important
information from other users of the Center. While the numbers will not be as significant as
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student numbers, the information gleaned from this group will be valuable to help address the
Data Analysis
Data gathering from the tracking portion of the assessment will be fairly simple and
straightforward. Over the course of a semester, staff will track attendance at each event. Because
the University of Dayton swipe card system automatically collects and tallies number of
attendees, the numbers would reported regularly. In addition, the ID cards would provide
demographic information. Surveys sent out after the event would collect further demographic
data. Information on the impact of the events and the Center in general would also be collected
from the survey. Leedy & Ormond (2010) point out that a survey can be used to discover both
quantitative and qualitative information, based on the types of questions. Using some open-ended
qualitative questions can help move the survey beyond just demographic data and basic
attendance information.
Because a Likert scale would be used, the number tabulation could be averaged and
checked for reliability using the Cronbach’s Alpha. Consistent positive surveys would provide
helpful data to ask for more funding for events or open hours at the Center. Conversely, negative
surveys could be reviewed to address issues with types of events/speakers, location, or timing.
A focus group of students who have attended events, as well as smaller group for faculty
and staff who attend events, could be created. The individuals in these focus groups do not
necessarily need to have a positive engagement with the Center, just some sort of regular
interaction through event attendance. Freeman (2006) provides some basic considerations for a
focus group, including size, length of time for questions, and the tasks of a moderator. The focus
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assistant would take notes, as well as use a recording device to ensure that the transcript is
accurate. The data would later be coded with an emphasis on words that signify engagement,
growth, connect, development, and future potential for interaction. To get at the heart of the
assessment’s goals, a detailed narrative report would be used to analyze the data and scout out
themes. From these themes, future plans for optimizing students’ learning and/or development
would be addressed. As Schuh and Upcraft (2000) mention, this report, and how it is written, is
key to getting action steps from an assessment plan. They note that a well-written report should
present the assessment in brief, and should include recommendations (p. 20). This report will
include a brief explanation of why the assessment was done, what the Center had hoped to learn
and gain from the assessment, and what assessment can do, generally, for an identity center or
In addition to assessments that provide information about what works well at the
Women’s Center that might be of interest to multiple groups of stakeholders, an assessment that
considers and values the student experience as it directly relates to their development and
When considering the work of the Women’s Center, it is easy to determine the type of
student learning objective that could be assessed. The vital student learning outcome that the
mission and vision of the Women’s Center promotes and works toward is simple but profound.
Student attendees at Women’s Center events and activities will be able to showcase increased
knowledge of women’s issues and articulate actions they can take to be champions of their own
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rights and the rights of others. The focus groups discussed earlier will be particularly helpful in
discovering if this student learning objective is successful. Questions can be directly related to
events and participation in Women’s Centers activities, and will be worded so as to prompt open-
ended reflection on what the attendees have learned, gained, and taken away as action items as a
Conclusion
The types of assessments described here would be beneficial for moving the Women’s
Center closer to their stated mission and goals. Tracking participation in events and activities, as
well as through post-event surveys, will provide concrete quantitative evidence of what works
well and what does not, and give staff a better sense of how they are reaching students. Drilling
down further, the surveys and focus groups will also provide qualitative information about how
well the Center is doing with certain student learning outcomes and objectives. Both of these
endeavors will allow the Center to reflect, plan, and implement programmatic changes that will
benefit stakeholders, especially students. Sharing a brief but detailed narrative report with
stakeholders will allow the Center to further accomplish goals and provide an ongoing
connection to the evolving work of the Center, rather than just shelving the results. Stakeholders
will be aware of the data, goals, and future plans, and can help assess whether or not these items
are accomplished. This will create a feedback loop that could help prevent stasis. Assessment is a
References
Freeman, T. (2006). Best practices in focus group research: making sense of different views.
Journal of advanced nursing 56(5), 491–497
Leedy, P.D. & Ormond, J.E. (2010). Practical research: Planning and design. Boston:
Pearson.
Schuh, J. H., & Lee Upcraft, M. (2000). Assessment politics. About campus, 5(4), 14–21.
https://doi.org/10.1177/108648220000500405