Summative Evaluation: Partnership Champions: SENCER-ISE

The National Center for Science & Civic Engagement (NCSCE) contracted RK&A, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a summative evaluation of Partnership Champions: SENCER-ISE and Professional Development Through Mentoring to Enhance Learning Environments (Partnership Champions), an IMLS-funded project. Partnership Champions builds upon NCSCE’s SENCER-ISE initiative, which supports ten cross-sector partnerships between museums and higher education institutions. With the addition of Partnership Champions, five past SENCER-ISE partners take on the role of mentors to a new group of partners.
In Fall 2016, RK&A administered a pre-questionnaire to new partners (Higher Education [HE] and Informal Science Education [ISE] professionals) who were awarded funding for their SENCER-ISE project to serve as baseline information for the summative evaluation. The summative evaluation explores lessons learned from project partnerships to help inform SENCER’s support of the Partnership Champions project moving forward. RK&A collected data from partners, mentors, and other staff involved in the project using in-depth interviews and additional data from partners using an online standardized questionnaire.