Education and Evaluation for the NRT: Accounting for Numerous Requirements, Multiple Disciplines, and Small Cohorts

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe our approach to program evaluation for the National Science Foundation National (NSF) Research Traineeship (NRT) Program in Sustainable Food, Energy, and Water Systems at Purdue University. The NRT program is designed to educate and train the next generation of engineers, agronomists and scientists to meet local food, energy and water management needs with solar energy. Assessment and evaluation activities are important aspects of this work, but require significant attention to capture the range of activities undertaken by very small cohorts of interdisciplinary students and faculty. Our goal was to develop a “sustainable” evaluation plan given our observation that programs often begin with very ambitious assessment and data collection goals that diminish over time. This paper is a case study that describes the rationale for our assessment and evaluation choices, and select results from these activities.