Association For Interactive Media Education, St. Louis, MO
GRG is conducting formative and summative evaluations for the Association for Interactive Media Education’s (AIME) ATETV.org project. ATETV aims to broaden the reach and impact of the existing Advanced Technology Education (ATE) community by producing interactive web-based video to promote awareness and expand dissemination of ATE efforts. Project goals are to reach, recruit, and retain more ATE students, educate policy-makers, and encourage industry involvement in ATE programs. GRG’s evaluation goals include monitoring the link between program activities and intended outcomes during video development and production, and determining effectiveness of the project in meeting its goals once the website is accessible by the public.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Boston, MA                                                                                                    Trustee Advantage is a grant program designed and sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts to help the Boards of Trustees at five Massachusetts hospitals advance the governance of quality and safety improvement at their institutions. This one-year program provides funding for three components: a coaching engagement, an in-depth experiential practicum, and participation in an ongoing peer learning community with other grant recipients. As part of our process evaluation, GRG is collecting data from Board members, coaches, and learning community facilitators to understand how the program is unfolding. GRG’s outcome evaluation will focus on intermediate outcomes such as Board members’ commitment to improved quality and safety and understanding of their role in quality and safety governance, the extent to which Boards implement or plan to implement changes in service of these goals, and the facilitators of and barriers to such efforts going forward.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Brown University, Providence, RI
GRG is evaluating the Seasons of Change project. Our role includes working with Brown and its exhibit design partners as they develop an exhibit template that can be adapted to other regions of the country by substituting harbingers of change that are iconic for regional landscapes and seasons. GRG will also evaluate the primary goal of the program: to advance the field of informal science education by developing an innovative traveling exhibit that makes climate change research, data, findings, and theories intriguing and intellectually accessible to general audiences, and by framing it in a local and personally relevant context.                                                                                                                                                                                  

City of Boston and the Family Nurturing Center of Massachusetts, Boston, MA
Multi-year evaluation for the City of Boston’s Smart from the Start (S2) initiative. The goals of S2 are to increase the school readiness of Boston’s lowest-income children and their families and to build the capacity of Boston’s communities to support school readiness. The first year of evaluation involves both quantitative and qualitative data collection from multiple sources and has three overarching components: 1) the first phase of a longitudinal study; 2) a cross-sectional study; and 3) a study of community capacity.                                                                                                                         

EDC, Newton, MA
Process and summative evaluation of the National Infrastructure of Support for Extended Explorations in Science and Engineering in After-School Programs. This NSF-funded program is designed to train and support educators at community based organizations to conduct more effective hands-on science and engineering projects with children. GRG is examining the extent to which the proposed train-the-trainer model supports community based organizations and informal educators in promoting children’s science inquiry skills.

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, Boston, MA
GRG is engaged in a planning process with HPHCF regarding its Growing Up Healthy initiative. Growing Up Healthy is a comprehensive five-year leadership and funding initiative that aims to address childhood obesity in Massachusetts , New Hampshire , and Maine . HPHCF currently is funding eight anchor grantee programs (4 in MA, 2 in NH, and 2 in ME). GRG is developing a detailed plan to externally evaluate the initiative overall. This development phase includes reviewing the anchor grantees’ written plans for programming and evaluation; reviewing data pertinent to childhood obesity prevention in the target states, including an HPHCF-commissioned report from the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy; interviewing representatives from each anchor grantee program; working with HPHCF to develop an initiative-wide logic model; and deciding on an overall framework, set of research questions, and data collection plan for evaluation of the initiative.                                                                                                                                                       

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA
GRG is conducting an evaluation of the Education and Public Outreach (EPO) activities associated with Chandra X-ray Observatory, launched by NASA in 1999 as its flagship mission for X-ray astronomy. The Chandra EPO is based at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard University. Chandra EPO activities include several program components designed to increase public awareness and interest in astronomy and in the data being collected and sent back to the science community by Chandra. The Chandra EPO program has multiple components, including: web and print materials; workshops developed for teachers on using EPO-developed materials in the classroom; and programs for high school students held at MIT and Rutgers University using Chandra-collected data. Through survey data collection from the audiences for these programs and materials, the evaluation is gathering information on public awareness of the Chandra mission and X-ray astronomy as well as the efficacy of current EPO programming in fostering awareness and engagement with X-ray astronomy and space science research.   
                

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA
GRG is conducting summative evaluation of The Black Hole Experiment Gallery, a traveling exhibit and accompanying materials to be produced by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. GRG is assessing two innovations of this project: 1) the inclusion of significant input from youth collaborators in the design and development phase, and 2) the use of networked exhibit technologies to personalize and enhance the visitor experience of science inquiry.  The first venue from June 22 through August 2009 is the Museum of Science, Boston.    
                                                                 

Institute for Advanced Learning and Research (IALR), Danville, VA
GRG is engaged in formative, process, and summative evaluation of the IALR's Dan River Information Technology Academy (DRITA). A major goal of this NSF ITEST-funded project is to implement a youth program that will "provide opportunities for promising students of color to: 1) develop solid Information Technology skills, and 2) acquire the background and encouragement needed to enable them to pursue higher education in STEM fields." The academy courses include basic IT skills and a range of topics including programming, converged wireless technologies, and robotics.