Colleges Receive Grant to Measure Moral and Spiritual Development of Students

WORCESTER, Mass. – Three New England Catholic liberal arts colleges will partner in a pioneering assessment project funded by a grant from The Teagle Foundation of New York. Assumption College, College of the Holy Cross, and Saint Anselm College will work together to examine how undergraduates acquire and refine the moral, ethical, civic, and spiritual values that lie at the heart of their institutional missions.

The grant is part of the Foundation’s Outcomes and Assessment initiative, which explores the potential of faculty-led, value-added assessment.

For the project, titled “Assessing Students’ Moral and Spiritual Growth in Liberal Arts Colleges,” faculty and administrators from the three colleges will collaborate in exploring ways to measure student development of values. The institutions will also assess the extent to which they are successful in providing opportunities — especially academic ones — that encourage such values.

The development of students’ personal value systems is a distinguishing feature of all three colleges, clearly stated in their respective mission statements. The project will analyze current tools and practices, as well as new methods with the goal of refining and implementing assessment strategies—ones that can also be shared with other liberal arts colleges nationally.

The grant was one of 15 recently awarded by The Teagle Foundation, totaling nearly $500,000 to fund collaborative projects involving more than 35 colleges, universities, and educational institutions. Holy Cross will serve as the lead institution for the grant.

“If colleges and universities are to bring student learning to the highest level possible, they must build systematically on what they have already achieved,” said W. Robert Connor, president of The Teagle Foundation. “With this latest round of grants, we aimed to provide targeted support for the information gathering that is crucial to the development of liberal education, for the assessment instruments and processes that let us know how well we’re serving students and how we can do still better, and for the fresh thinking that energizes the teaching and learning process as a whole.”

About The Teagle Foundation The Teagle Foundation (www.teaglefoundation.org) provides leadership for liberal education, marshalling the intellectual and financial resources necessary to ensure that today’s students have access to challenging, wide-ranging, and enriching college educations. It believes that the benefits of such learning last for a lifetime and are best achieved when colleges develop broad and intellectually stimulating curricula, engage their students in active learning, explore questions of deep social and personal significance, set clear goals, and — crucially — systematically measure progress toward them.

About Assumption College Founded in 1904, Assumption College (www.assumption.edu) is a liberal arts and professional studies college rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition. Assumption has been named a “Best Value” in the 2006 edition of Barron’s Best Buys in College Education. For the last several years, Assumption has been included in the U.S. News & World Report “America’s Best Colleges” guide as well as the Princeton Review’s Best Northeastern Colleges as one of the best colleges in the northeastern United States. Press contact: Troy Watkins twatkins@assumption.edu 508-767-7175

About the College of the Holy Cross The oldest Catholic college in New England, Holy Cross (www.holycross.edu) was founded in 1843 by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Worcester, Mass. Holy Cross is a highly selective, four-year, undergraduate liberal arts institution and ranks among the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges. Press contact: Ellen Ryder eryder@holycross.edu 508-793-2419

About Saint Anselm College Saint Anselm (www.anselm.edu) is a four-year Catholic, undergraduate liberal arts college, founded by Benedictine monks in 1889. Located on 440 wooded acres in Manchester, NH, the college prepares its students to live creative and generous lives as engaged and active citizens. The college’s humanities program, Portraits of Human Greatness, has earned national recognition. In 2005, Princeton Review named Saint Anselm one of 81 Colleges with a Conscience nationwide. Press contact: Barbara LeBlanc bleblanc@anselm.edu 603-641-7241