Past Projects

  • Character Counts Puerto Rico

    The Josephson Institute (National CHARACTER COUNTS!) is contracting with RISE for the development of an evaluation of the process and outcomes of the Tus Valores Cuentan program implementation in all Puerto Rico public schools.

    Read More


  • Community College Initiative (CCI) Program Evaluation

    RISE provides comprehensive evaluation of the CCI Program, which annually hosts upward of 150 students from countries such as Brazil, Egypt, and Pakistan at community colleges across the U.S. The CCI Program Evaluation examines the nature of experiences of participating students, student mentor families, project coordinators, and community college professionals, as well as CCI Program…

    Read More


  • Developing Resources for CISE REU PIs

    Brandi Geisinger is serving as the evaluator for the NSF Developing Resources for CISE REU PIs project. The evaluation will focus on identifying areas of need and evaluating the effectiveness of the web-based resources.

    Read More


  • Developing Virtual Content for STEM Career and Technical Education

    Eastern Iowa Community College (EICC) has partnered with RISE to evaluate the development and implementation of virtual training resources for automotive blower, instrumentation, and lighting systems, as well as for home HVAC systems. This web-based virtual training utilizes WebGL for the training platform.

    Read More


  • Education for Women in Agriculture

    RISE has worked with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Value Added Agriculture and Women in Agriculture programs to design and implement a sound systematic evaluation process in their courses for women farmers and ranchers.

    Read More


  • Effective Mentoring of Student Researchers Study

    RISE researchers Brandi Geisinger, Mari Kemis, and Arlene de la Mora, in conjunction with ISU faculty member Raj Raman, are working to learn about effective and ineffective mentoring strategies for student researchers. This work, funded, in part, by the NSF Center for Biorenewable Chemicals (CBiRC), originally stemmed out of the realization that mentoring was an…

    Read More


  • Engaging Female Community College STEM Transfer Students

    RISE partnered with ISU’s Program for Women in Science (PWSE) to assess the experiences of female community college students who transferred into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in Fall Semester 2011. The goal of this project was to determine how and when PWSE should be connecting with these students and what existing barriers…

    Read More


  • Evaluation of a Dual Language Program

    RISE is working with an Iowa PK-12 school district to evaluate their dual language curriculum option. Students in the program receive half their instruction in English and half in Spanish with the goal of developing both native English speaking and native Spanish speaking students who are bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural.

    Read More


  • Evaluation of AgrowKnowledge

    AgrowKnowledge, the National Center for Agriscience and Technology Education, is an Advanced Technician Education project of the National Science Foundation for which RISE serves as external evaluator.

    Read More


  • Evaluation of In-depth Mathematical Practices and Content Teacher Training (IMPACT2)

    In order to determine whether project goals have been met, RISE developed an evaluation plan that analyzes data from a variety of sources including teacher and student pre-post knowledge, teacher ratings of and reflections on project activities, and online resources and discussions.

    Read More