Center for Social Research

Summer training open to Calvin and select clients

CSR has welcomed our new staff and student team and begun a summer-long training program. We'll be working with our team almost every Friday from 8:30 to 12:00, and Calvin faculty and staff and some of our off-campus clients are invited to ride along if you're interested.

The schedule is subject to change, but here are the topics we're going to cover:

Date	Week #	Topic	Room
Friday 5/25	1	Orientation - internal only	DeVos 110
Friday 6/1	2	Microsoft Word and print survey reformatting	DeVos 110
Friday 6/8	3	Inquisite Survey Software	DeVos 110
Friday 6/22	4	Databases 101 and Microsoft Excel	Hekman 122
Friday 6/29	5	Microsoft Access	Hekman 122
Friday 7/6	6	Intuit QuickBase	Hekman 122
Friday 7/20	7	Qualitative Data/Research	DeVos 110
Friday 7/27	8	Tableau I	DeVos 110
Friday 8/3	9	Tableau II	DeVos 110
Friday 8/17	10	ArcGIS	DeVos 110
Friday 8/31	11	Stata/SPSS	DeVos 110

Contact us by email if you're interested and we'll send you a file that will help you to register for specific weeks.

Departing CSR Graduates

It’s never easy to say goodbye to our departing staff and students, but the end of the academic year brings its usual season of change to CSR. Several students and a staff member are moving on to grad school or full-time jobs.

• Nathan Mosurinjohn (Graduate Research Specialist) – After graduating from Calvin College in 2009 with a B.A. in Geography and International Development, Nathan joined the staff at CSR as a Research Specialist. At the end of summer, Nathan and his wife Shelly will head to the west coast while Nathan pursues his Masters of Science in Geography at the University of Oregon.

• Kelsey McCallops (Student Research Assistant) – Kelsey’s been with CSR since her sophomore year. She is leaving us with a B.A. in Psychology and is landing at Ohio University where she will enter a Doctorate of Physical Therapy program. Kelsey begins her studies at OU as a Graduate Assistant.

• Tony Ditta (Student Research Assistant) – Tony has also been working at the CSR since his sophomore year. He graduates with a B.A. in Economics and is moving to Chicago for a research position at the University of Chicago.

• Traci Montgomery (Student Research Assistant) – Traci will be graduating from Calvin with a B.S. in Mathematics and Geography, after which she will transition into a full time staff position at the CSR as a Graduate Research Assistant. Traci’s summer includes a six week break to attend a summer program on sustainable development at UC Berkeley.

• Kristen Napp (Student Research Assistant) – Kristen worked for CSR this past year, and after graduating with a BSW, she joins us full time on staff as a Graduate Research Assistant.

• Mitchell Uitvlugt (Psychology intern) – Mitchell interned with us from the psychology department this past semester. He will be starting a research assistant position in the Laboratory for Cognitive & Decision Sciences as well as in the Cognitive Control Neurolab, both at Michigan State University.

Thanks to all of you for your great work at the Center for Social Research during your tenure with us. You’ve been an integral part of our team and we will miss you. We wish all of our departing staff and students the best in their new endeavors! Don’t forget to stay in touch with us.

New publication on data sharing for Believe 2 Become

CSR’s ongoing, long-term work with the Believe 2 Become Initiative is beginning to bear fruit. A collaborative article, for which I served as the lead author, has just been published in The Foundation Review, “the nation’s first peer-reviewed journal of philanthropy”:

Title: Developing a Master Data Sharing Agreement: Seeking Student-Level Evidence to Support a Collaborative Community Effort in Education
Authors: Carlson, Neil E.; Hernández, Edwin; Edmond-Verley, Chaná; Rotondaro, Gustavo; Feliz-Santana, Eleibny; Heynig, Susan
Source: The Foundation Review, Volume 3, Number 4, 2011 , pp. 14-33(20)
Publisher: Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University

The article documents the coalition’s successful efforts to come to agreement on the complex issue of sharing student data in a secure, responsible fashion to support better personal service to students by program staff, greater alignment of out-of-school educational services with in-school curriculum, and more robust evaluation of overall program results in improving educational outcomes. The agreement facilitates transmission of data between the Grand Rapids Public Schools (GRPS) and the Community Research Institute (CRI) at Grand Valley State University (GVSU).

With parental consent, identified student information such as attendance and recent academic performance is (or will be) available on a secure, need-to-know basis for staff at B2B out-of-school programs through nFocus Solutions’ TraxSolutions suite. Meanwhile deidentified data for larger populations of B2B participants and comparison groups is available to the research and evaluation team (including CSR, CRI and Basis Policy Research) .

While similar agreements have been made in other cities and school districts, they have generally been short term, less comprehensive, or have dealt only with aggregate data rather than tracking individual educational results over time. At CSR, we are privileged to be involved and excited about the potential this data-sharing infrastructure offers to Grand Rapids and to other metropolitan partnerships. As we learned at a recent Intelligence for Social Policy conference, interest and investment in data sharing agreements is soaring across the country. Grand Rapids is keeping pace and may even be moving ahead of the pack.

Social Sciences Lunch Seminar Series Spring 2012

The Social Sciences Lunch Seminar Series resumes for the spring semester 2012, highlighting four faculty speakers who will present and discuss their research.

Friday February 17: Jennifer Jewett VanAntwerp, Associate Professor of Engineering: "Examining Calling as a Motivator in Career Decisions: A Comparison of Engineering Graduates from Secular and Christian Undergraduate Institutions"

Friday March 9: Mikael Pelz, Assistant Professor of Political Science: "Presidential Campaign Rhetoric and Partisan Change: The Case of Evangelical Protestants"

Friday April 13: Neil Carlson, Director, Center for Social Research: "Social Science on the Front Lines: Collecting, analyzing and visualizing survey and casework data from the Believe 2 Become Initiatives's Neighborhood Engagement efforts"

Friday April 27: Adel Abadeer, Professor of Economics: "How Informal Norms Marginalize Women in Collective Societies in Less Developed Countries"

All of the 2011-12 seminars take place at Calvin College, in the Alumni Association Board Room, 12:30 p.m. with lunch tickets free and available starting at 12:15 p.m.

Please join us for lunch, research, and discussion.

Sponsored by the Center for Social Research, the Dean for Social Sciences and Contextual Studies, and the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Christian Perspectives on Political, Social and Economic Thought.

CSR’s New Director

The Board of Trustees has just confirmed the appointment of Neil Carlson as the director of the Center for Social Research. Formerly the center’s assistant director, Neil stepped into the director role unofficially last year when Jim Penning passed away. The governing board was pleased to appoint Neil to that position officially after an extensive review of the center’s administrative structure resulted in a redefined director position.

Please join us in congratulating Neil and thanking him for his continuing contributions to the Center for Social Research and the college.