Program Evaluation and Research Center (PERC) of the

College of Human Resources and Education at West Virginia University

2011 – 2012 Annual Activity Report

Reagan Curtis, Ph.D., Director

Zornitsa Georgieva, Graduate Student Researcher

Brandi Slider Weekley, Graduate Student Researcher

PERC officially launched July 1st, 2011 and this is an incredibly exciting time as we establish relationships, structures, and operational procedures to position PERC as an important resource and voice for West Virginia and the region. The report that follows is a description of PERC’s activity July 2011 through May 2012. You will find our outstanding faculty affiliates and graduate student researchers have implemented funded projects, contributed to extramural funding applications, and provided evaluation and research service across the college, university, and state of West Virginia. We are continuing to build a strong PERC organizational community through our newsletter, website, and meetings of current and potential faculty affiliates. We will continue to stimulate research activity through evaluation and research consultation and writing of evaluation sections of extramural grant applications, as well as through seed grants to faculty affiliates and doctoral students. In this report, we describe a clear and direct return on the college’s initial investment and provide a powerful argument for continued investment as PERC moves toward becoming self-sustaining.

PERC 2011-2012 by the Numbers

This PERC by the Numbers listing provides a glimpse of return on investment and potential for growth leveraged from a $40,867 initial investment made by the HRE Dean’s Office for a 1 year pilot of PERC.

$20,699,000 requested through 4 grant proposals currently under review at NIH, NSF, WVDE, and Corporation for National & Community Service

$3,540,000 requested through 5 proposals submitted but not funded by NIH and NSF

$32,000 awarded to 3 internally (university) funded projects implemented this year

$30,000 awarded to 3 externally (nonprofit educational organization) funded projects implemented this year

$9,000 in PERC Faculty Affiliate seed grants awarded

27 PERC Faculty Affiliates part of our organizational community and 13 of those actively involved in completed or ongoing projects

5 funding proposals currently in active development with near term submission dates

3 funded projects ($3 million total award) implemented this year that were awarded prior to PERC launching

2 research projects implemented as service (without funding)

2 Graduate Student Researchers funded and fully engaged this year, 2 additional graduate students will engage with PERC for course or program credit Fall 2012

1 PERC Community Gathering with about 30 attendees (faculty affiliates, potential faculty affiliates, and graduate students)

1 PERC Website designed, developed, implemented, and maintained

1 Issue of PERC Newsletter distributed in hard copy and online

1 Dissertation Data collection award request for proposals distributed

Program Evaluation and Research Center (PERC) of the

College of Human Resources and Education at West Virginia University

2011 – 2012 Annual Activity Report

PERC brings together expertise in program evaluation, research design, data analysis, and dissemination of findings to support the implementation and evaluation of education-related endeavors throughout West Virginia. We conduct research and evaluation to inform the work of practitioners and policymakers concerning the efficacy of existing programs and the needs of specific populations for improvement of educational and social outcomes. We work with educationally-oriented nonprofit and governmental organizations to support their missions, often collaboratively pursuing external funding from sources such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and Departments of Education, as well as private foundations and nonprofit organizations.

PERC is working hand in hand with the WVU 2020 strategic plan to move toward “national research prominence” and to help improve the quality of life for all people of West Virginia. We begin this report with a brief description how PERC activities align with the university’s strategic plan. No attempt is made to provide a comprehensive description of PERC activities in this section, but we believe this introduction will help readers understand the center’s mission and goals as they relate to the larger institution.

WVU 2020 Goal 1: Engage undergraduate, graduate, and professional students in a challenging academic environment. PERC graduate assistants work closely with faculty affiliates, actively learning about research methods and working to develop their own academic and research pathways. Funding for graduate assistants allows them to focus on full time academic participation, and to be fully immersed in this process. The graduate students working at PERC are engaging in real world research experiences, helping them to learn about the process and the intricacies involved in the messiness of actual research. These students also participate in multiple aspects of the grant writing process from development through submission and implementation, giving them invaluable experience in working with a variety of extramural funding agencies. As future leaders and faculty members, these experiences contribute immensely to a valuable skill set.

WVU 2020 Goal 2: Excel in research, creativity and innovation. PERC fulfills an interdisciplinary role in working with multiple colleges across the university including CEMR, HSC, ECAS, and HRE, as well as with external groups. Multidisciplinary collaboration is the future of academic research and the direction several federal funding agencies are overtly emphasizing for successful awards. We work to bring diverse interdisciplinary partners together in collaborative research teams to pursue funding opportunities and implement funded projects when awarded. The ongoing evaluation and communication in these relationships foster collegiality

and broadened experiences for everyone involved.

WVU 2020 Goal 3: Foster diversity and an inclusive culture. PERC has multiple projects in process and in the works that focus on recruitment, skill development, and success for students from the PK-20+ spectrum. At-risk and underrepresented groups are key participants in these projects, opening doors for students who may otherwise be excluded or left behind.

WVU 2020 Goal 4: Advance international activity and global engagement. A current project supporting this goal works to give STEM teachers from rural Appalachian schools opportunities to experience and develop innovative teaching tools. Currently, teachers travel to the United Kingdom to learn about diverse schools and varied teaching strategies. Expansion of this project is in the works, with Finland as the next possible site for this international collaboration.

WVU 2020 Goal 5: Enhance the well-being and quality of life for the people of West Virginia. PERC has multiple ongoing projects that have the intentional focus to help improve the quality of life of state residents. Targeting at risk students for academic and social support, increasing students’ opportunities for exposure to engineering and science careers, promoting teacher training and development, and working with the HSC to reduce health disparities are immediate and literal translations of Goal 5 into action. The depth and breadth of these projects allow multiple opportunities for the expertise and ability of PERC members to be meaningfully shared with West Virginians.

The remainder of this report includes narrative description of PERC activities organized around four broad areas: 1) Community Building, Outreach, and Communication, 2) Project Implementation, 3) Funding Proposal Activity, and 4) Resources and Inputs. Each of these sections will describe PERC resources, activities, and outputs. Substantial additional documentation is available on request as appropriate (e.g., external funding proposals, annual evaluation reports, conference presentations, manuscripts). Taken together, these sections describe a clear and direct return on the college’s initial investment and provide a powerful argument for continued investment as PERC moves toward becoming self-sustaining.

PERC Community Building, Outreach, and Communication

During the first year of its existence, we worked hard to build PERC community both within and beyond HRE and WVU. We began with a community composed of two graduate research assistants and a director. We then sought to grow our community through engagement of faculty affiliates. The role of Faculty Affiliate entails being listed on the website (http://perc.hre.wvu.edu/personnel), attending occasional community building events, and being willing to entertain possible engagement with specific projects as invited by the director of PERC. The director carefully considers the appropriateness of specific projects for the expertise and research agenda of faculty affiliates invited to engage in those projects. Initially, all HRE faculty members were invited to engage with the center as Faculty Affiliates. As the year

progressed, faculty members in other units were invited to become affiliates as they engaged with the center.

Table 1: Faculty affiliates and departmental affiliation

Faculty Affiliate Department Faculty Affiliate Department

Ahern, Terence TLC Carver, Jeffrey C&I/L

Bernstein, Malayna C&I/L Chapman, Paul Dean’s Office

Bolyard, Johnna C&I/L Hayes, Sharon C&I/L

Breault, Rick C&I/L Hartley, Melissa SPED

Cairns, Darran* Mech. & Aero. Eng. Hazi, Helen C&I/L

Curtis, Reagan TLC Hursh, Daniel TLC

Daniels, Jeff CRCCP Markstrom, Carol TLC

Olthouse, Jill SPED Moilanen, Kristin TLC

Rye, Jim C&I/L Moorewood, Aimee C&I/L

Schimmel, Christine CRCCP Nardi, Anne TLC

Sieros, Kostatinos* Mech. & Aero. Eng. Shambaugh, Neal TLC

Toth, Eva C&I/L Walls, Richard JAN/TLC

Warash, Bobbie TLC Whitehouse, Pam TLC

Williams, Adriane C&I/L

Bold indicates those directly involved in implementing PERC projects. *Faculty members in Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources.

Faculty currently and soon to be listed on the website as faculty affiliates are listed in Table 1. Of these 27 faculty affiliates, the 13 whose names are listed in bold font in the first column directly engaged PERC supported projects during the past year. As we move forward, and especially as we are successful acquiring additional extramural funding, we will engage more faculty affiliates and additional graduate students in similarly direct project implementation roles.

PERC has pursued multiple routes to inform faculty and other interested parties regarding its’ activities and to build community and awareness of the role PERC can play in the college, university, and state. Our PERC website (http://perc.hre.wvu.edu/) was launched July 2011 and has been continuously updated with current activities and new faculty affiliates. WVU Today ran a press release June 7, 2011 focused on the impending launch of the center and services PERC would provide. We developed a PERC Newsletter describing our activities and their connections to the WVU 2020 Strategic Plan that was distributed electronically November 2011. We held a PERC gathering December 9 where we distributed hard copies of the newsletter. Over 30 faculty affiliates, potential faculty affiliates, and graduate students attended to hear an overview of PERC activity to date and the benefits to faculty affiliates and graduate students who engaged in that work. WVU Today ran second press release January 10th, 2012 focused on how PERC’s activities further and support the WVU 2020 Strategic Plan. We recently created a PERC flyer describing our expertise, the need for our services, and current projects. This was distributed at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association during April 2012 in addition to several local venues.

PERC is also building both community and research support infrastructure through small seed grant awards to faculty affiliates and dissertation researchers. The dissertation research award competition received only a single submission that was not deemed fundable this year. Better advertisement and multiple proposal deadlines will be instituted next year to increase participation. A request for proposals from faculty was structured so that those who proposed rigorous research likely to lead to external funding connected to PERC’s mission and their own research agenda were most competitive. Each proposal was evaluated by three faculty members and one graduate student. We announced funding for 3 awards ($3,000 each) at the Spring 2012 HRE Faculty Assembly. Each faculty member who received an award agreed to become a PERC faculty affiliate and to include PERC in appropriate future external funding proposals and awards. The funded projects were:

1. “McDowell County School Immersion Project” (PI: Rick Breault, C&I/L). The project has as its ultimate end, the improvement of instruction and learning for the students of McDowell county. However, equal emphasis will be placed on improving the preparation of future teachers to work in rural areas of West Virginia, examining new models of collegial planning, and innovative models of curriculum and teaching that are appropriate to schools like those in McDowell County. The focus of both the instruction and research will be on: (1) the integration of the arts, particularly storytelling and movement/dance, into the teaching of the new common core standards for elementary science and literacy, and (2) on the use of a place‐based, region-specific approach to curriculum and teaching first developed in the Foxfire program in Rabun County, Georgia.

2. “Analysis of Averted School Shooting Rampages” (PI: Jeffrey Daniels, CRCCP) Following

the rampage school shootings of the 1990s, much research was directed toward school shooters, with less attention given to averted shooting incidents. The exception, research by Daniels and colleagues (2010), studied four such events in detail. The purpose of this research is to study on a large scale, what school and law enforcement personnel did to foil attempts to commit school shootings in the U.S. The population served by this research includes law enforcement officers who work with schools (school resource officers) and educators. Data will include news accounts of each incident, police and school reports, and interviews with key law enforcement and school personnel involved in foiling the plot. Activities to achieve goals and objectives include both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data generated for this study. Following analyses, deliverables such as conference presentations, peer-review publications, and training materials for the target population of this research will be developed. The primary goals of this research are to (1) discover the characteristics of averted school rampages in the U.S., and (2) discover the important “trip wires” that led to the plot being interrupted, discovered or terminated.

3. “Writing Talent and Technology: A Strengths-Based Approach” (PI: Jill Olthouse, SPED). Talent development pedagogy focuses on identifying strengths and interests of all students and shaping educational experiences to further these talents, with the assumption that many deficits will be addressed in the course of developing talents. There will be three 15-hour summer workshops offered: persuasive, creative, and scientific (informational) writing, each designed according to multiliteracies and talent development pedagogy. The findings from the summer enrichment program will be used to form an e-mentoring writing experience for students in the Fall Course SPED 670. In this experience, teachers in an online course will offer writing feedback and encouragement to a group of talented writers (preferably in a high-need school) in the context of the online social writing site, storybird.com. The following research questions will be addressed in participatory action research and using a form of phenomenological inquiry modified for use with children: 1) How can technology best be used to support development of writing talent in children? 2) What personal factors fuel the development of writing talent in children?

PERC Project Implementation

This section describes PERC activity on projects that were implemented this past year with support from PERC personnel. These include a) 6 projects funded this past year, b) 3 projects funded prior to PERC’s launch, and c) two unfunded research projects undertaken as service.

Projects funded this year. The 6 projects funded since PERC’s July 1, 2011 launch include 3 funded externally and 3 funded internally. Education Alliance, an education oriented nonprofit organization based in Charleston, WV, provided external funding for three projects:

“PERC eMentoring Evaluation” ($21k total funding), “Walk the Talk: Voices of At Risk Youth” ($7k total funding), and “Frontline Post-Discussion Questionnaire Data Entry and Analysis” ($2k total funding). Each of these projects was funded under a fixed price agreement model so that in addition to F&A return any unexpended funds revert to PERC on project completion. Funding was also supplied to PERC for 3 projects from sources internal to WVU: “Clinical and Translational Research Preparation” ($10k total funding), “Nanotechnology and Ethics” ($5k total funding), and “Technology, Learning, and Culture Departmental Evaluation” ($14k total funding). Each of these funded projects is described in the remainder of this section.

The Education Alliance is currently implementing eMentoring in 13 counties in West Virginia. The program connects high school students with mentors through an anonymous online system. Mentors work through a 10 activity program with mentees interacting asynchronously to help inform students of postsecondary education and career options. PERC (PI: Reagan Curtis, GSR: Zornitsa Georgieva and Brandi Slider) assembled an eight member panel of local and national eMentoring experts and developed a questionnaire to facilitate their review of the curriculum being used in the program. The feedback from the expert reviews was compiled along with quantitative and qualitative analyses of data collected from the online portal into a formative evaluation report. In addition, PERC submitted a proposal to NIH to support an impact study of the eMentoring program; however that proposal was not funded. We are currently negotiating for an additional year of funding from Education Alliance for the eMentoring Evaluation project.

Walk the Talk is a face to face mentoring program facilitated by Education Alliance in 6 West Virginia high schools. Students identified as at-risk of dropping out of high school participate in the program with the goal of helping them complete high school and engage in postsecondary education. PERC (PI: Malayna Bernstein, GSR: Brandi Slider and Zornitsa Georgieva) has completed interviews with six students at three high schools focused on what students’ lives are like in general, the struggles they experience, and how Walk the Talk impacted these areas. Interviews were coded through qualitative content analysis and PERC developed case descriptions for each participant, an analysis of individual and overall themes related to barriers and supports impacting the students, and time code information connecting video segments to thematic coding. Complete interview footage was provided for Education Alliance to create an educational video to encourage students and mentors to participate in the program as well as inform the community and stakeholders about this initiative.

The Frontline Network is working with Education Alliance to gather information from stakeholders in 20 counties across West Virginia that will be used to foster community discussions and action regarding high school completion and postsecondary education. At each community forum, the Frontline Network presents information about the dropout problem in West Virginia and options to ameliorate this issue. At the end of the presentation participants representing a wide variety of community stakeholders complete a survey about what they

learned in the presentation and how they think students in their communities are affected by various issues related to dropout. PERC (PI: Reagan Curtis, GSR: Brandi Slider) has taken the information from these surveys and compiled county-level and overall reports. The Frontline Network is using these reports with participating communities to develop comprehensive dropout prevention plans that are responsive to county contexts.

A large Clinical Translational Research proposal to the National Institutes of Health will be described in the proposals under review section below. This proposal received a very strong priority score prompting the Health Science Center leadership to provide internal funding to support preparation for implementation (or resubmission should that be necessary). PERC (PI: Reagan Curtis, GSR: Zornitsa Georgieva) is conducting interviews with all key leadership of this large project, planning support structures for logic modeling each component, and beginning integration of evaluation metrics and timelines with the online project management software.

Regarding “Nanotechnology and Ethics”, Eva Toth provided WV Nano internal funding for PERC (Consultant: Reagan Curtis, GSR: Zornitsa Georgieva, Brandi Slider) to support coding and analysis of data collected through course assessments from students enrolled in the 5 Year Benedum Teacher Education program over the course of two semesters. PERC worked with Dr. Toth to develop a coding system to assess changes in students’ reasoning related to ethics in nanotechnology. Results will be submitted for presentation at the National Association for Research in Science Teaching Conference in 2013.

The Department of Technology, Learning, and Culture supported a graduate student researcher (Brandi Slider) to facilitate departmental evaluation directed by Sebastian Diaz. This evaluation utilized a concept mapping / pattern matching methodology to explicate stakeholder (departmental faculty) identified organizing concepts, key priorities, and evaluation metrics. The graduate research assistant worked with departmental faculty and completed data entry. The data were feedback from faculty regarding identification of the elements by which they thought the department’s efficacy should be evaluated. In addition to facilitating data entry for this departmental evaluation, the graduate student researcher completed transcription for faculty in the department to support American Educational Research Association 2012 presentations.

Projects funded prior to PERC launch. Prior to PERC’s launch, the director was part of three different research teams who successfully obtained external funding for relatively large scale projects. In each case, the director’s primary role was evaluation and social science research support. Given the director’s continued involvement in these projects and that each project conceptually connected with PERC’s mission, once PERC launched these projects were considered part of PERC.

These projects included “Engineers of Tomorrow” (EoT) and “Research Experience for Teachers

in Energy and the Environment” (RET) with principal investigators in the Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, as well as “Quality Rating and Improvement for West Virginia Child Care” (QRI) with a principal investigator in HRE. EoT was in a no-cost extension period and provided one month of salary support to PERC. RET was in the last of 3 years and also provided one month of salary support to PERC. QRI was in an unfunded dissemination of findings phase.

Engineers of Tomorrow (EoT) was funded by NSF for $1.9 million for 5 years to attract and retain qualified Appalachian students, particularly women and underrepresented minority high school students, to engineering and science-oriented careers and to encourage improvement in math scores for all students. The EoT project was executed through four tightly coordinated strategies for outreach to high school students and for retention of college freshmen. Support for the first three of these strategies has been institutionalized at West Virginia University. This past year, PERC facilitated a final annual report to NSF as well as data analyses and writing for an American Society of Engineering Education conference proceedings paper (Winn, Kweder, & Curtis, 2012) and a manuscript under review at the International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education (Pyzdrowski, Miller, Sun, Curtis, Hensel, & Winn, under review).

Our aim with the Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program in Energy and the Environment is to train and inspire Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teachers working in high-need schools in rural Appalachia. This project was funded by the NSF for $500,000 over 3 years. WVU hosts 10-12 middle and high school STEM teachers for six-weeks each summer. Teachers are trained in project-based learning (PBL), attend an International Summer Energy School at the University of Birmingham, UK, and perform socially relevant, individualized research on energy conversion, materials for energy conservation and energy storage, alternative fuels and emissions, and environmental monitoring and maintenance. Faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and engineers from industry work in collaboration to initiate research projects that continue in the teachers’ classrooms during the school year. PERC provides ongoing implementation evaluation focused on improving the experience for teachers, as well as annual impact evaluation focused on how the RET and PBL units impact attitudes and capabilities of teachers and students.

WV Department of Health and Human Resources/Bureau of Children and Families provided $630,000 for a one year project entitled, “Quality Rating and Improvement for West Virginia Child Care” (QRI). In a statewide effort to map the landscape of early childhood care in West Virginia, working toward improving care for all young children in the state, data were collected from 476 Child Care Centers, 29 Family Child Care Centers, and 55 Family Child Care Homes across 27 counties. Environmental rating scale data was collected through direct observation and detailed improvement plans were developed accordingly. Prior to PERC’s official launch, the director provided random sampling design and data collection consultation, as well as statistical data analysis and report generation. Subsequent to July 1, 2011, the director took a

lead role authoring a manuscript currently under review following an initial revise and resubmit decision from Early Childhood Research Quarterly, a top-tier journal in the field.

Unfunded research projects. In addition to funded projects described above, PERC engaged in two unfunded research projects as service: “Engineers of Tomorrow Summer Camp Survey” and “School Counselors Need Assessment Survey”.

Following the completion of the Engineers of Tomorrow (EoT) no-cost extension period, PERC designed and deployed an online survey to identify high school students who participated in EoT summer camps and later enrolled at WVU as undergraduates. This utilized email addresses archived during the previous 6 years at summer camp registration and social networking sites directed toward EoT camp alumni. Data from this effort became part of an American Society of Engineering Education conference paper.

PERC collaborated with Christine Schimmel, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of School Counseling, who later became a PERC faculty affiliate, on a project that utilized a relatively new online survey instrument to help school counselors better understand their students’ needs. PERC completed data analysis and generated a report to guide school counselors’ practice using data collected from 625 students at North Marion High School. PERC developed an Excel-based analysis tool that can be utilized with minimal training by school counselors state-wide to inform their practice based on data from a statewide needs assessment survey that has recently been initiated. As described below, a proposal is currently under review by the WV DOE for funding to train school counselors statewide in the use of this tool.

PERC Funding Proposal Activity

PERC has been very active generating external funding proposals and evaluation sections included in funding proposals generated by principal investigators in HRE, the Statler College, the Health Sciences Center, and Education Alliance. We currently have 4 funding proposals ($20.7 million requested) under review. We submitted 5 additional proposals ($3.54 million requested) that were not funded, two of which will be resubmissions included in the 5 funding proposals we are currently preparing with near term submission deadlines.

Proposals currently under review. There are currently 4 funding proposals under review generated by PERC or with PERC writing the evaluation sections. These include the “Clinical Translation Research” proposal to the National Instituted of Health ($20 million requested over 5 years), the “Research Experience for Teachers: Sustainable Energy and Transportation” proposal to the National Science Foundation ($500,000 requested over 3 years), the “Americorps on the Frontline” proposal to the Corporation for National and Community Service ($190,000 requested over 1 year), and the “School Counselors Need Assessment Survey Project” to the West Virginia Department of Education ($9k per year ongoing).

The Clinical Translation Research proposal to NIH is the largest of these projects. Dr. Christopher C. Colenda, Chancellor of the WVU Health Sciences Center, described this project in a presentation to the WVU Faculty Senate Executive Committee as “easily the most important and transformative undertaking by this institution after the cancer center”. PERC’s director serves an assistant director in charge of the Tracking, Quality Improvement, and Evaluation Core (TEQuIP) for this project (http://wvctsi.org/pages/WVCTSI-Overview/Assistant-Directors-(1)).

Figure 1. WV Clinical and Translational Science Institute Organization Chart.

The organizational chart provided in Figure 1 shows the central role that PERC plays through TEQuIP. With direct lines to both CTSI Director Sundarum and HSC Chancellor Colenda, TEQuIP is charged with formative and summative leadership personnel evaluation and utilization of a logic modeling process to evaluate and facilitate continuous quality improvement for all CTSI activity. The Clinical Translational Research proposal received a highly fundable priority rating and Chancellor Colenda approved internal funding for preparatory work by PERC. If the proposal is funded by NIH, the project will support PERC with 2.7 academic months and .9 summer months for the director, $30,000 for equipment, and $10,000 for supplies and travel from NIH funds. Additionally, the Health Science Center has committed over $1 million in matching funds to support salary increases and recruitment of TEQuIP core personnel.

The Research Experience for Teachers: Sustainable Energy and Transportation proposal is a re-envisioning of the currently funded RET building on the strengths and lessons learned in that project. The proposal outlines the development of a program for professional development for middle and high school teachers in the fields of mathematics and science who participate in a six week summer program. The participants will engage in authentic research in university laboratories working with faculty and graduate students on specific projects. In addition, participants will complete PBL professional development and create PBL units for their classrooms. PERC compiled evaluation of the ongoing RET project data collected over two years to include in this proposal and wrote the evaluation section as well. If funded, a PERC faculty affiliate will receive one month salary per year to serve as evaluator on the project.

Education Alliance has applied for a 2012 AmeriCorps State Formula Grant that will fund 25 AmeriCorps Mentors to work in seven West Virginia Counties. The mentors will work with up to 700 struggling students over the 2012-2013 school year. Mentors will meet weekly with their mentees and participate in workshops focused on developing positive attitudes toward school and learning, problem solving, social skills, note taking, and time management. PERC wrote the evaluation section of the grant, including appropriate measures and tools for formative and summative evaluation, and a time line for data collection and report generation. If the project is funded, PERC will receive $20,000 to support faculty affiliate and graduate student researcher time to conduct the evaluation.

The School Counselors’ Need Assessment Survey implemented in West Virginia schools is designed to help counselors better identify students’ needs. PERC developed a proposal that identifies specific activities for better utilization of this instrument. The proposed scope of work includes: analysis and report generation for individual schools and facilitation of school counselor training sessions to introduce school counselors to the tool PERC developed to support their analysis of their own needs assessment data. This proposal includes a mechanism for ongoing PERC collaboration with WVDE for approximately $9k/year.

Proposals submitted for review but not funded. PERC contributed to or wrote 5 submitted proposals that were not funded. These proposals included “Adapting Model Analysis for the Study of Mathematical Proof Schemes” ($458K requested from NSF for 3 years), “Rural Workforce Development in STEM Fields” ($899k requested from NSF for 3 years), “eMentoring of Adolescents and Impacts on Educational, Psychosocial, and Behavioral Health Outcomes” ($178K requested from NIH for 2 years), “WVU Scholarship Program in Energy and the Environment” ($500k requested from NSF for 3 years), and the “WV Math Science Partnership: Engaging 8th, 9th, and 11th Grade Students in STEM through Mathematized Design Based Learning for Societally Relevant Energy Modules” ($1.5 million requested from NSF for 3 years). PERC would have served as evaluator on the Adapting Model Analysis, Rural Workforce Development, and WVU Scholarship Program projects had they been funded. The eMentoring project would have run entirely through PERC with the director as principal investigator and

two faculty affiliates as co-investigators. A substantial portion of the WV Math Science Partnership project would have run through PERC with the director and a faculty affiliate as co-investigators on that project. Both the WVU Scholarship and the WV Math Science Partnership proposals are currently being revised based on positive reviewer feedback and will be resubmitted as described in the next section.

Proposals currently in active development. PERC remains extremely active generating external funding applications. We currently have 5 such proposals in development that will be submitted in the near term. These include resubmissions based on the WV Math Science Partnership and the WVU Scholarship Program proposals that were highly reviewed but not funded by NSF in the last cycle. Additionally, we will be submitting a proposal at the end of May 2012 to NSF for “Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM” by integrating undergraduate engineering design and preservice teacher education mathematics and science methods in a school gardening context. This project includes 2 PERC faculty affiliates as co-investigators, another PERC affiliate as evaluator, and partners with the Statler College and 4 local schools. We are also currently writing a proposal for educational policy-relevant research to support a policy center at Education Alliance through a subcontract on a grant they will submit to the Benedum Foundation summer 2012. If awarded, the subcontract will support two PERC faculty affiliates and two PERC graduate student researchers to conduct the work over a two year period for approximately $100k.

PERC Resources and Inputs

The activity described in this report was supported with resources from three primary revenue streams: Facilities and Administrative Costs Return (F&A), Budgeted Items from Funded Projects, and HRE Dean’s Office Investment. As PERC moves ahead, we expect the need for HRE Dean’s Office Investment to decrease so that PERC becomes self-sustaining through F&A return and budgeted items in funded projects.

Facilities and Administrative Costs Return (F&A). For projects that are externally funded, a certain percentage (26% if off-campus, 48% if on-campus unless limited by funder) is added to direct costs to cover facilities and administrative overhead. Those funds are divided among WVU, HRE, and PERC for components of the project that are associated with PERC’s departmental affiliation number. This return occurs at the time the expense is actually paid out. The first quarter of 2012 was the first time PERC received F&A return, receiving $994. This figure was the 4th highest among all HRE units with departmental affiliation numbers. Only the Job Accommodation Network (a wholly externally funded entity), the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, and the Department of Technology, Learning, and Culture exceeded PERC in the amount of F&A return during that time period. As currently funded projects continue to expend funds and as additional proposals for external funding are awarded, increases in F&A return to PERC will be a key indicator of our growth.

Budgeted Items from Funded Projects. Another important revenue stream is the budgets of funded projects. These most often cover faculty affiliate and graduate student researcher time to complete project specific tasks, but may cover other expenses depending on the project. Each of the 6 projects funded this year and described above are examples of this revenue stream. To the degree that graduate research assistants funded initially by HRE Dean’s Office revenue are engaged in completing these project specific tasks, these funds replace those provided by the college. Additionally, several of our projects are funded under a mechanism called a “fixed price agreement”. Under this mechanism, any funds remaining in the budget once deliverables are completed are retained by PERC and become part of our central operating budget.

Initial HRE Dean’s Office Investment. All of the activity described in this report should be considered growth leveraged from a $40,867 initial investment made by the HRE Dean’s Office. That initial investment, along with financial and marketing support from Dean’s Office personnel and resources from funded projects we have acquired, has been translated into what we consider phenomenal productivity for our first year of existence. When we initially proposed the development of a center such as PERC, we maintained that it could become self-sufficient within 3 years if adequately supported. The initial proposal was for funding support somewhat higher than that provided, but given such strong performance this year we believe it is reasonable to believe PERC can reach maturity with two more years of similar HRE investment.