SPEC Associates receives another major grant from Lumina Foundation for Education to study what works in making higher education more efficient and effective
SPEC Associates received an $800,000 grant from Lumina Foundation for Education to continue studying how state policy and higher education systems can be more efficient and effective in getting more students to complete higher education.
Lumina Foundation for Education works to ensure that 60 percent of Americans are college-educated by 2025. Lumina Foundation’s higher education productivity work aims to improve the productivity of postsecondary education without sacrificing quality or access. In November, 2009, the foundation invested $9.1 million dollars in a group of seven states that demonstrated during a year-long trial period their commitment to educating many more students within existing resources. The seven funded states are: Arizona, Montana, Texas, Tennessee, Maryland, Ohio, and Indiana. An exciting part of SPEC’s work as the national evaluator is that each of the seven states will work with an in-state evaluator to plan and evaluate their own work, and then share lessons learned among all major stakeholders in a learning community fashion.
Lumina’s investment in SPEC Associates to learn about what works, for whom and under what circumstances now totals about $2.3 million. This year’s grant will enable SPEC Associates to gear up and plan the methods for following the seven states in the long term, and for learning about the national conversation about higher education productivity that is also a part of Lumina Foundation’s work.
Read more about Lumina Foundation for EducationRead more about Lumina’s Higher Education Productivity work
SPEC Associates receives major grant from Lumina Foundation for Education to evaluate national policy initiative
SPEC Associates has received an $816,000 grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education to evaluate its major national initiative, Making Opportunity Affordable (MOA). MOA aims to improve the productivity of postsecondary education without sacrificing quality or access. SPEC Associates has created an international, multi-disciplinary team of experts in higher education research and policy, in systems thinking in evaluation, and in evaluating inter-organizational collaboratives that will keep a keen eye on the initiative as it unfolds during its learning year, and that will offer evaluative reflections on the return on learning that MOA can offer to others interested in improving the productivity of higher education. Lumina Foundation for Education is an Indianapolis-based private foundation dedicated to expanding access to and success in education beyond high school.
Read more about the Lumina Foundation for EducationRead more about the Making Opportunity Affordable initiative.
SPEC Associates goes national with client satisfaction survey
SPEC Associates has been working for the past five years with the Area Agency on Aging 1-B to refine its tool for conducting telephone surveys with elderly and adult consumers of home and community-based care. The survey is consistent with the performance indicators established by the Administration on Aging’s Performance Outcome Measurement Project. SPEC Associates now offers these telephone interview and report services to other Area Agency on Aging management across the nation to monitor client satisfaction in concrete ways that can improve service delivery.
Learn more SPEC’s client satisfaction survey servicesDownload the 2008 Client Satisfaction Survey Report from Area Agency on Aging 1-B
SPEC Associates offers new service: Process improvement
SPEC Associates has recently expanded its services! For many years SPEC Associates has been helping other nonprofit organizations improve their ability to collect, analyze and report on their programs’ implementation and outcomes. We have now expanded this service to include improving the internal processes of nonprofit organizations to become more efficient and effective. If you would like more information about these services contact Victoria Straub by email at vstraub@specassociates.org or by phone at 313-964-0500 ext. 204.