Grant Evaluation

Lawrence was one of 33 institutions selected in 2018 to receive a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence Grant, joining 24 schools selected in 2017. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute awarded Lawrence $1 million over a five-year period (2018-2023). The program’s aim is to catalyze schools’ efforts to engage science students of all backgrounds and identities. The program is targeting “the New Majority” — underrepresented minority, first-generation and low-income students.

Read more! And be sure to check out presentations and workshops our office has done in collaboration with others on campus!  

Lawrence University was one of 13 institutions awarded a NCAA CHOICES alcohol education grant in May 2017. The NCAA awarded Lawrence $30,000 over a three-year period (August 2017 - August 2020). We received a no-cost extension (August 2020 - August 2021). The purpose of the program covers three main areas -- to engage students in learning about the current culture of alcohol use on the Lawrence campus, to develop and implement alcohol-free programming and to encourage responsible alcohol use. The target audience will include Lawrence student-athletes, and the secondary audience will include all students, athletics coaches and Student Life staff. The program has five goals:

1. The program's first goal is to establish, train and sustain a group of student-athlete leaders, who will be trained to provide peer mentoring and take the lead on alcohol abuse prevention efforts geared toward all students at Lawrence. This group will be called the Champions of Change Council.
2. The second goal is to conduct a review of existing and current data to educate Lawrence students and staff about the current culture of alcohol use on campus as well as best practices to deter continuation of this culture.
3. A third goal is to implement training for students and staff on alcohol abuse. They will be able to apply what they have learned to implement comprehensive alcohol-abuse prevention strategies on the Lawrence campus.
4. The fourth goal is to utilize a social norms campaign to raise awareness about perceived alcohol-related behavior on campus compared to actual alcohol behavior patterns.
5. The fifth goal is to develop and implement alcohol-free programming events for Lawrence students to prevent high-risk alcohol use.

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In September 2013, Lawrence was awarded a $2,136,998 grant from the Department of Education (Title III Strengthening Institutions Program). The five-year, federally-funded grant will allow Lawrence to implement an integrated network of academic support initiatives designed to help students overcome obstacles and achieve their educational goals. We received a one-year no-cost extension. To achieve the goal of increasing retention and graduation rates, the grant will support several activities:

• Additional staff positions for the Center for Teaching & Learning and Student Academic Services (now Center for Academic Success) that will substantially increase the hours of each term of one-on-one and small group academic skills development, as well as ESL services.

• A retention management system will be launched with new software to coordinate faster, more targeted connections to students who would benefit from supportive, individualized outreach by a network of faculty and staff.

• New bridge programs will develop core skills and better prepare incoming students for college.

•  New and advanced training for faculty advisors to equip them with tools to provide better, more culturally competent academic advising and mentoring.

•  The CORE peer mentoring program launched in the fall of 2013, will be expanded to serve all freshmen, matching each Freshman Studies section with two upper-division peer mentors. The CORE mentors will help first-year students make Connections, receive ongoing Orientation, identify and utilize campus Resources and develop realistic Expectations about academics and student life.

The name of our Title III grant-funded initiatives is COMPASS, which is an acronym for: Commitment to Orientation, Mentoring, Persistence, Advising, Support, and Success.

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Dr. Kathleen Fuchs, Project Director for the Lawrence Lifeline Project, was awarded a $1,500 Mielke Family Foundation Faculty Research Grant to aid in the evaluation of QPR in the Fox Valley community. Kristin McKinley was the project evaluator. The purpose was to assess the effectiveness of QPR in the community and to build a community data set to strengthen future suicide prevention and mental health grant or funding proposals as we work with the community to build a coordinated system of mental health care in the Fox Valley community. 

The following outcomes occurred:

• Created a community-wide QPR pre- and post-survey in collaboration with representatives from National Alliance of the Mentally Ill (NAMI) - Fox Valley, Community for Hope - Fox Cities (now Prevent Suicide Fox Cities), and M-Link Mental Health Integration Grant (named Mental Health Linkages) funded by the Department of Education to connect families, communities, and schools in the Heart of the Valley (Kaukauna, Kimberly, and Little Chute). 
• Built a comprehensive community dataset. 
• Analyzed data and prepared reports for community stakeholders (e.g., Affinity Health System, ThedaCare, M-Link including Heart of the Valley school districts and Fox Valley Metro Police Department, and clergy). Based on the report, Affinity Health System committed funds for ongoing training.

In 2008 Lawrence University submitted a grant proposal to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for a Garrett Lee Smith Campus Suicide Prevention Grant. In September 2009 Lawrence was selected to become one of 22 Garrett Lee Smith Cohort 4 campus grantees. The university was awarded $300,000 for three years to develop, implement, and evaluate a suicide prevention program on campus. We received a no-cost extension of the grant, ending in June 2013.

The two mutually reinforcing goals of the Lawrence Lifeline Project were to (I) Strengthen Systemic and Sustainable Structures to effectively address the mental health needs of students particularly those at high risk; and (II) Change Campus Culture to reduce stigma, reduce suicide risk factors ingrained in the academic and social culture on campus, and promote awareness and use of mental health services.

Our objectives were: (1) to implement project activities in a transparent and inclusive manner, drawing on perspectives and expertise of broad and diverse on- and off-campus constituencies; (2) to develop new and enhance existing training programs for campus personnel and students to recognize, respond to, and refer distressed students, support students affected by suicidal behavior of others, and respond in culturally competent ways; (3) to strengthen internal and external networking infrastructures; (4) to develop comprehensive, culturally appropriate educational outreach approaches tailored to the unique needs of our campus; (5) to monitor, evaluate, assess, and report on program activities to assure sustainability.

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The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) is a multidisciplinary undergraduate program with multiple institutions working toward a shared goal. The overarching aim is to address the retention and persistence of underrepresented domestic minorities (African American, Hispanic/Latino(a), Native American, Alaska Native, Native Pacific Islanders, or Native Hawaiian) in STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) resulting in a significant increase in the quantity and quality of underrepresented minority students who graduate with a degree in the STEM disciplines. The Wisconsin Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (WiscAMP) was established in 2004 and Lawrence has been a member since its inception. The first WiscAMP Small Grant awarded to Lawrence University was in 2007. It was a Collaborative program with UW-Oshkosh, "WiscAMP Summer Opportunities: Lawrence-UW-Oshkosh Collaboration."

Lawrence University, like all alliance member institutions, has provided WiscAMP enrollment and degree information for their reporting and evaluation obligations since 2004. WiscAMP collects data from its alliance partners and then reports it to the National Science Foundation. The Office of Research Administration has been submitting annual enrollment and degree data to WiscAMP broken down by discipline, enrollment type, degree type, class year, sex, and race/ethnicity since 2012; prior to 2012 another department on campus was submitting these data. 

Page content was last updated on 2/24/2021.