October 4, 2007

LINCOLN UNIVERSITY AWARDED $199,000 GRANT
FROM THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

LINCOLN UNIVERSITY, PA ~ President Ivory Nelson has announced that Lincoln University has been awarded a two-year $199,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop the capacity of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to engage in the teaching and practice of culturally competent evaluation, focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education programs.

“This is an important effort because it identifies the wealth of talent on HBCU campuses for advancing STEM programming for communities of color,” President Nelson said.

Lincoln University will serve as the lead institution and is joined on the project by Hampton University, Johnson C. Smith University, Morgan State University, North Carolina Central University and Tennessee State University.

“The goal of the project is to diversify and build leadership in the field of program evaluation as well as to strengthen evaluator skills in assessing STEM programmatic initiatives directed toward multiethnic and underrepresented populations,” said Dr. Kevin E. Favor, project director and associate professor of psychology at Lincoln University.

Dr. Favor said one way of achieving this goal is by forming collaboration with select HBCUs to assess the current program evaluation efforts and related research and teaching activities on each of the planning group campuses and to identify effective models of evaluation capacity building and networking.

He added that another way of achieving this goal is the creation of a communications network and mechanism for information sharing regarding evaluation instruction and practice among and between HBCUs and other higher education institutions. 

Dr. Favor said meeting with representations from public and private funding agencies, foundations and organizations will help promote diversity in the evaluation across a variety of educational levels and disciplines to share results and initiatives.

“The intellectual merit of this project is that it will bring together interdisciplinary teams of evaluators and evaluative researchers who are skilled at various disciplines and methodologies,” Dr. Favor said. “They will be educators who are sensitized to cultural issues related to evaluation methods and knowledgeable on strategies to make connections between research and practice."

Founded in 1854, Lincoln University is a premier, historically Black University that combines the best elements of a liberal arts and sciences-based undergraduate core curriculum and selected graduate programs to meet the needs of those living in a highly technological and global society.  The University is nationally recognized as a major producer of African Americans with undergraduate degrees in the physical sciences (biology, chemistry and physics); computer and informational sciences; biological and life sciences.  Lincoln has an enrollment of 2,423 undergraduate and graduate students.

Lincoln University of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
1570 Baltimore Pike, P.O. Box 179, Lincoln University, PA 19352 \ (484) 365-8000