Springfield College Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship Hosts Davis Educational Foundation Grant Summer Institute

The Springfield College Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship hosted its Davis Grant Summer Institute on Monday, June 7, presented in a virtual format. The event featured keynote speaker, Dr. Peggy Maki, Education Consultant Specializing in Assessing Student Learning in Higher Education.

As part of Maki’s presentation, she used examples from her experiences as a higher education consultant in helping attendees integrate assessment of student learning into educational practices, processes, and structures. Maki has assisted undergraduate and graduate colleges and universities, higher education boards, higher education organizations, and disciplinary organizations for more than a decade. From 2011 to 2013, as part of a Davis Education Foundation grant awarded to the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, she served as the sole consultant to the 28 public colleges and universities in Massachusetts to assist them build their assessment capacity to score students’ authentic work using the value rubrics.

The day’s agenda was commenced by Dr. Mary Ann Coughlin, Springfield College Senior Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Dr. Chris Hakala, Springfield College Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship, who welcomed attending faculty from multiple colleges and institutions throughout western Massachusetts.

This year’s summer institute was part of an initiation $265,000 grant awarded to Springfield College from the Davis Educational Foundation to assist in the creation of faculty development opportunities focused on the implementation of real-time assessment procedures to help increase and maintain student academic success.

The grant has allowed the Center to fund faculty from across departments and schools to engage in workshops on assessment, and implement those strategies into their courses, and use the assessment data to evaluate program-learning outcomes.

The goals are to improve the timelines of interventions when students are not meeting learning objectives and to move the class forward when all students are meeting those objectives. The Center will coordinate the training and provide faculty with the ability to engage in scholarship around the development of these assessment procedures.

The Davis Educational Foundation, established as a public charitable foundation in 1985, supports the undergraduate programs of public and private, regionally accredited, baccalaureate degree granting colleges and universities throughout the six New England states. Elisabeth K. Davis and Stanton W. Davis co-founded the foundation after Mr. Davis's retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc. The foundation is an expression of the couple’s shared support and value for higher education and has provided more than $114 million in grants to more than 172 institutions.

Mr. Davis contributed tremendous vision to his business and the industry during periods of remarkable growth and transformation. Through automation and technological changes, he remained true to his core value of listening to the customer. This core value continues in the foundation’s highly individualized approach to grant making.

Springfield College is an independent, nonprofit, coeducational institution founded in 1885. Approximately 4,100 students, including 2,500 full-time undergraduate students, study at its main campus in Springfield, Mass., and at its regional campuses across the country. Springfield College inspires students through the guiding principles of its Humanics philosophy – educating in spirit, mind, and body for leadership in service to others.