Dear Cara, one additional thought on student engagement with CAB and GTAP -- A key reason why students are attracted to these Centers has to do with their contacts in industry, as well as the public sector. It is all about jobs these days, and the Centers offer experiences that can both enrich the students' CV's as well as garnering valuable work experience. I have also found that many students change their career objectives after undertaking a project or internship with one of our consortium members. Thanks for the question!
Thanks for the question Cara. A thought or two...first, I believe most all of the points we made would apply to a student facing center. You still need resources, administrative support, a clear purpose, and so on, for the reasons Tom and I articulated. Beyond the points we made, and I am sure you are aware of this, you must be creating value for students. Students need a reason to engage with the center and there must be some tangible benefit for them - if student engagement is weak/outcomes can't be measured it is highly doubtful resources will continue to be available. Some of the points we made about creating value for faculty would apply to creating value for students - why should they engage? How do you get students involved in setting the center's agenda? How do you make sure you are evolving with the students and their needs? How do you communicate the work the center is doing to build student awareness? Again, nothing here you don't already know - but thanks again for the question!
Hi Joe, in general, the metrics should aligned with the goals/purpose of the Center (as you would assume). For CAB, beyond financial viability, we would track number of days of programming, and days of programming by type (public, private, association). Also, we tracked numbers of participants in programs and net revenue by program. On CAB research, we tracked conventional metrics around publications, downloads, etc. While the current CAB leadership has pushed this area further, we also did some work on measuring client ROI on programs. Thanks for the question.
Great question, Joe! In the GTAP Center, we track network membership via profiles on the web site (32,000 in 175 countries). Many of these network members discover collaborations through the Project. We would like to find a way to quantify these connections. We also track citations to the core GTAP products. But we would like to do a better job measuring impact. Any suggestions would be most welcome!
Dear Cara, one additional thought on student engagement with CAB and GTAP -- A key reason why students are attracted to these Centers has to do with their contacts in industry, as well as the public sector. It is all about jobs these days, and the Centers offer experiences that can both enrich the students' CV's as well as garnering valuable work experience. I have also found that many students change their career objectives after undertaking a project or internship with one of our consortium members. Thanks for the question!
Thanks for the question Cara. A thought or two...first, I believe most all of the points we made would apply to a student facing center. You still need resources, administrative support, a clear purpose, and so on, for the reasons Tom and I articulated. Beyond the points we made, and I am sure you are aware of this, you must be creating value for students. Students need a reason to engage with the center and there must be some tangible benefit for them - if student engagement is weak/outcomes can't be measured it is highly doubtful resources will continue to be available. Some of the points we made about creating value for faculty would apply to creating value for students - why should they engage? How do you get students involved in setting the center's agenda? How do you make sure you are evolving with the students and their needs? How do you communicate the work the center is doing to build student awareness? Again, nothing here you don't already know - but thanks again for the question!
Hi Joe, in general, the metrics should aligned with the goals/purpose of the Center (as you would assume). For CAB, beyond financial viability, we would track number of days of programming, and days of programming by type (public, private, association). Also, we tracked numbers of participants in programs and net revenue by program. On CAB research, we tracked conventional metrics around publications, downloads, etc. While the current CAB leadership has pushed this area further, we also did some work on measuring client ROI on programs. Thanks for the question.
Great question, Joe! In the GTAP Center, we track network membership via profiles on the web site (32,000 in 175 countries). Many of these network members discover collaborations through the Project. We would like to find a way to quantify these connections. We also track citations to the core GTAP products. But we would like to do a better job measuring impact. Any suggestions would be most welcome!
I wonder if you've looked at what makes successful student facing centers ;-)
Longevity is one measure of success for Labs/Centers, what other ways metrics should we use to calculate their performance?