Building Evaluation Capacity in Community Colleges

The purpose of this study is to provide insight into strategies that promote a practice of evaluation in community colleges. This study focuses on the aspects of organizational culture including employee engagement, leadership participation, evaluation practices, values and expectations, organizational norms, and benefit and incentive system associated with evaluation practice. Evaluation includes those activities conducted to identify the performance of processes and initiatives as well as the use of the information to improve the process or understanding of the process The growing focus on accountability in higher education has included speculation about the most important measures of institutional success. Despite the need for and importance of establishing a practice of evaluating the impact of community college efforts, community colleges lack consistent and effective evaluation practices. This qualitative study targeted key personnel from thirty-four (34) public community colleges across the United States recognized by the Aspen Institute in the Community College Excellence Program. Surveys were sent to the person responsible for accreditation at the institution and a telephone interview was optional subsequent to the completion of a questionnaire in order to learn more about question responses. Participants described that evaluation and closing the loop was more likely to take place if there were processes in place that made evaluation practice straight- forward, easy to do, clearly defined, and nestled within an infrastructure to support evaluation practice. An effective infrastructure needed to include expectation clarification, leaders talking about evaluation, support for employees, processes and structures in place, and recognition that is valued. Results of this study are intended to assist leaders in selecting strategies that most effectively promote a culture of evaluation that encourages the practice of measuring and id