National+assessment+of+service+and+CE

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** National Assessment of Service and Community Engagement ** Mathew Johnson, Director of Academic Community Engagement and Associate Professor, SienaCollege [mjohnson@siena.edu]

Don Levy, Director of Siena Research Institute, Siena College [dlevy@siena.edu]

**Keywords:** National Assessment of Service and Community Engagement, student reported experiences, quantitative measurement of community engagement, institutional measurement, individual student measurement

**Conference Track:** Contexts and methods: Theoretical and conceptual frameworks, research designs, and methodological issues

**Format:** Research/Scholarly paper

**Summary** In order to address the need for an objective assessment tool that can measure the aggregate amount, frequency, and depth of community engagement across an institution, the authors developed the National Assessment of Service and Community Engagement (NASCE). To date, the NASCE has been the instrument utilized to assess 13,559 students from 31 colleges and universities of varying sizes and affiliations, spanning nine different states in the United States. This paper articulates the innovative method of the NASCE as well as the derivation, implementation, and initial research findings.

At the most basic level, NASCE seeks to determine the extent to which students at institutions of higher education are engaged in their communities. The NASCE is the first tool that uses student reported experience to quantitatively measure community engagement among individual students and the institutions in which they are nested. In order to quantify community engagement, the NASCE computes a quantitative value referred to as a “POP score,” or “Percent of the Possible.” The POP score combines participation, frequency, and depth into one score for every student, in all nine areas, across the institution and among the entire sample. This paper introduces the NASCE and provides quantitative data on community engagement and service among college students through the unique POP score and Capacity Contribution prisms by nine need areas. This paper also demonstrates the utility of the NASCE as an assessment and planning tool that allows colleges and universities to accurately identify their current contribution to the community and take steps to improve their overall level of community engagement.

**References** There were no references provided with this proposal.


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