projects
We have worked with hundreds of organizations over the decades on projects that include several broad areas, primarily STEM, arts and literacy, and students with children in higher education. Foci include development of partnerships, curriculum, technology and professional development. PERG’s projects range in scale from small developmental projects to research studies and multi-site evaluation of national and international partnerships, with funding from federal and state agencies and foundations.
The following summaries of recent projects represent the range of our work.
New England Arts for Literacy
Program evaluation
New England Arts for Literacy (NEAL) was a four-year Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) grant funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The project brought together teachers and teaching artists with professional development providers, Kurt Wootton of ArtsLiteracy/ Habla and Tina Blythe of Project Zero; and three museum partners, The Peabody Essex Museum, Springfield Museums and the Addison Gallery of American Art.
The project’s desired outcomes included: teachers who can design and facilitate powerful arts-integrated learning experiences that strengthen students’ literacy skills; schools/classrooms with a positive climate and the capacity to offer high-quality integrated arts units of study; and students who are engaged in learning with a high academic self-concept and excellent reading comprehension. The NEAL project also sought to demonstrate improved academic outcomes as measured by state assessments in literacy.
The evaluation team, led by Debra Smith, was integrally involved from the start and provided regular formative feedback to help refine the project’s design and implementation.
The project was multifaceted and our partnership with PERG kept the NEAL team focused on meeting its goals and objectives, while providing a lens through which to reflect upon our strengths and opportunities for growth. As NEAL Project Director, I utilized PERG’s formative evaluation reports as a compass with which to steer our collective work over four years. This compass was the tool that guided NEAL towards its goals; it kept the project from getting lost in the storms that often accompany the day-to-day challenges of collective and collaborative work. PERGs contribution to the success of the NEAL project cannot be overstated.
Ruth Zaimes, NEAL Project Director
KIDsmART
Technical assistance & capacity building
KID smART is a New Orleans-based organization that engages children and educators in dynamic, creative, and relevant learning through the arts. PERG worked with KIDsmART to review and tune their internal evaluation system and to provide evaluation capacity building training to their staff and local evaluators with funding from Baptist Community Ministries.
PERG helped us to think critically and practically about our evaluation. They helped us create a system that is both deep and doable. Through working with PERG we were able to open up the evaluation conversation to many arts organizations in our city to build common vocabulary and action together.
Elise Gallinot Goldman, Executive Director
RELATE
Developmental evaluation
The RELATE program was founded in 2017-18 by psychiatrist Adam Silk in three Boston schools. Its mission is to increase trust in schools by providing educators with experiential learning about group leadership and dynamics. The two core goals of the program are: 1) to foster student growth and learning by helping teachers learn to build supportive and healthy classrooms, and 2) to improve teacher morale and retention by building strong collegial relationships. “RELATE” stands for Realizing Educational Leadership and Teaching Excellence.
PERG collaborated with Dr. Silk in designing a developmental evaluation to focus on improvement of program design, implementation and outcomes. From 2017 to 2019, PERG researchers met with program participants to create real-time feedback for meeting the needs of educators in the program.
I am so thrilled with what you’ve done in this year’s evaluation. Everything feels well-organized and completely on point. It’s a more positive assessment than I’d expected, frankly, which also makes it a happy reading experience for me!
Adam Silk, RELATE Founder
Berklee College of Music
Systems analysis and planning
In 2019 Berklee College of Music in Boston needed to update its academic program review process to more fully serve the current mission and organization of the institution, which now includes the New England Conservatory at Berklee. Additionally, it wanted to provide quality assurance and paths to improvement for all programs. The College requested assistance in understanding the various perspectives and experiences of the stakeholders in the program review process in order to design a more useful review for the future.
PERG researchers conducted interviews with the stakeholders across the institution, reviewed process documents, and proposed a revised design based in the College’s current focus and the desired impact on the institution.
Thanks to you both, Gene and Elizabeth, for all your work wading through a very complicated institution and navigating that so elegantly. This report is just what we needed.
Rob Lagueux,
Associate Vice-president for Academic Affairs
Berklee College of Music
Peabody Essex Museum Native American Fellows Program
Program evaluation
The PEM Native American Fellows (NAF) Program, funded by the Mellon Charitable Trust, provides Native American Fellows with professional leadership development that combines on-the-job museum experience with training in organizational development, management, strategic planning, fundraising and marketing. The Fellows, from various nations across North America and the Pacific and from diverse academic and professional backgrounds, work side-by-side with museum staff to develop the practical knowledge and skills needed to achieve their career goals as museum professionals or cultural and academic leaders for their communities.
Since 2017, PERG researchers have collaborated with program staff to create an annual report based on interviews with the Fellows and museum staff, and document analysis. The reports have led to improvements and new insights about diversity, equity and inclusion in the museum world.
Baccalaureate Student Parent Programs and the Students They Serve
Research study
This groundbreaking 2016 study of student parents and student parent programs at a variety of four-year colleges and universities across the country gives a glimpse into the lives and experiences of almost 300 young undergraduate student parents and recent alumni. It also provides useful information about long-standing programs and services supporting student parents on eight campuses.
Funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the study focuses on: program design, including features of wraparound and open programs, and common issues faced by all programs; parenting students, with a description of young (under 35) student parent experiences on campus, with student parent programs, and effects of college attendance on their children; and implications and recommendations of these findings for educational institutions as well as state and federal agencies.
Four Fact Sheets based on these findings are also available.
Family Friendly Campus Toolkit
Research & development
The Family Friendly Campus Toolkit is an award-winning self-assessment system and guide for improving supports and outcomes for students who are raising children. It was originally funded by the US Department of Education; an updated version was funded by Lumina Foundation and released in 2020. It is used by advocates at 2- and 4-year colleges and universities across the country to help gather data, raise awareness, develop new resources, and improve conditions and success rates for this important population.
I cannot emphasize strongly enough how the self-assessment results from the Toolkit process catapulted our efforts into new territory for serving our student parents.
Amy O’Keefe, Executive Director
Campus Alliance for Resource Education
Texas Woman’s University
With the help of the Family Friendly Campus Toolkit, we have spent the past year building a team of concerned students, staff, faculty, and administrators who are all deeply invested in making our campus more inclusive, welcoming, and accommodating to our student parents. It is our hope to continue to invest in this work, using the Toolkit as our blueprint and catalyst for innovation and improvement.
Jason Zelesky, Dean of Students
Mount Wachusett Community College
Elementary Mathematics Project (EMP)
Program evaluation
The Elementary Mathematics Project (EMP) was a 5-year project under the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Improving Undergraduate STEM (IUSE) program. Led by faculty in Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, this project developed and tested instructional units for Math Teacher Educators (MTE’s) to use in their undergraduate classrooms. The goal for these curriculum units was to increase the mathematical knowledge for teaching in future elementary teachers, as well as to improve instruction at the undergraduate level.
PERG’s work focused on gathering feedback from faculty instructors who piloted the four units in their courses. This was done through repeated surveys, and a selection of in-depth interviews which resulted in mini case studies of faculty whose instructional practices were impacted by the materials. The EMP units continue to be used by hundreds of faculty across the US to prepare pre-service teachers to teach mathematics in the elementary classroom.
I have had the pleasure of working with the talented personnel at PERG since 2007. Different researchers have been responsible for the evaluation of four NSF-funded projects that I directed as principal investigator. I have been impressed with the quality of their work, whether it involved the development of surveys, or interview and observation protocols. Their reports are well written, thorough, insightful, and have helped my projects improve. The positive relationship the researchers developed with the members of my projects has been an added bonus. I highly recommend PERG!
Suzanne H. Chapin,
Professor Emerita, Mathematics Education
Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development
Multigenerational Makers at Bayview
Program evaluation
Multigenerational Makers at Bayview is an NSF-funded Advancing Informal Science Learning Program (AISL) aiming to create an accessible makerspace in an affordable housing complex. Residents of the Bayview Towers community in Connecticut will work with CAST to co-design a makerspace that provides a place for residents to come together to learn and engage in a variety of making projects. This project began early in 2020 and has been significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Project leaders have been working to develop ways to build relationships with residents from afar, identifying potential community members who are interested in making to engage with remotely. Hopefully as the pandemic subsides, these community leaders will be able to help lead workshops for other residents and participate in the design of the physical makerspace at Bayview.
PERG’s original plan was to collect feedback from resident participants about their experience in the co-design process, as well as to look at the impact the makerspace has on community building at the Towers. As the project has had to shift, so has the evaluation. Currently, PERG is focusing on the documentation of the team’s decision making processes as they pivot to the constantly changing conditions.