ECTC Veterans

Abstract Elizabethtown Community and Technical College submitted a grant proposal to the Centers of Excellence for Veteran Student Success CFDA # 84.116G. ECTC has requested external evaluation services from the Evaluation Center from 10/1/15 - 9/30/18. The total award is $ for the three years. The evaluation will be to provide information and evidence on the ability of the new Center of Excellence to reach the following goals for their Veteran Students: 1) Improved, coordinated and comprehensive services to meet needs of veteran students; 2) Improved college experience for ECTC veteran students; 3) Growth in veteran persistence and completion; 4) Improved campus awareness of veteran students (challenges, issues, attributes); 5) Growth in veteran student enrollment. The implementation evaluation will include both a fidelity evaluation to examine the extent to which program directors implemented what they said they would and a process evaluation to report on the operations and how the program elements were implemented. Formative information will be collected from all stakeholders to guide and adapt program components in a timely manner. Implementation Evaluation Activity: Improved, coordinated and comprehensive services to meet needs of Veteran students Evaluation questions Data sources Analysis " To what extent has the project team implemented activities outlined in the proposal? " What have been challenges and successes during implementation? " What changes were made and why? " What do ECTC Veteran students need? " What are Veteran student perceptions of the implemented/proposed plans? Meeting minutes, interviews, artifacts (job posting, announcements, advertisements). Open ended questions to planning team and Veteran students (what is working well and what more is needed?). Survey of Veteran students Qualitative, organized by stages of change and themes. Quantitative. Descriptive. In addition to the descriptive and qualitative data, a survey will be given to all Veteran students to gauge the contextual level of need at ECTC. The survey will be modeled after the University of Arizona's Student Veteran Needs Assessment Survey. This information will further guide the implementation activities. Outcome evaluation The outcome evaluation will utilize both quantitative and qualitative information to measure progress towards benchmarks, as well as, document change in Veteran students' enrollment and persistence toward completion. In addition, the change in campus awareness of Veteran students and Veteran student college experience will be captured. Outcomes Evaluation Evaluation questions Data sources Analysis " What is the change in veteran student persistence and completion rates as a result of the program? " What is the change in veteran student enrollment? " Were grant benchmarks met? " What is the change in campus awareness of veteran student needs and challenges? " What is the nature of the veteran student's college experience? Are their needs being met and what else do they need? Institutional data Survey data Quantitative: descriptive, interrupted time series, correlations Qualitative-thematic To examine changes in persistence, completion, and enrollment, an interrupted time series design will be used to track institutional data over time. In addition, to determine whether the programs have successfully met student needs, the University of Arizona's Student Veteran Needs Assessment Survey will be adapted to allow the veteran student to reflect on the extent to which needs have been met. This will serve as a pre-post measure and also guide institutional planning. The results will be analyzed as both a matched pre/post analysis for those who stayed, but also analyzed looking at those who left compared to those who stayed to determine if their needs were significantly different. The final summative report will triangulate numerical data, perceptual data, and will also examine unintended consequences to determine the extent to which the project was institutionalized and project impact on enrollment, persistence, and completion rates of veteran students.