Education & Human Development

Center for Research and Evaluation
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The Center for Research and Evaluation provides schools, communities and public agencies with qualitative and quantitative research, program evaluation, custom-designed studies and informative publications, and serves as a clearinghouse for state and national educational data.

The Center is funded by the University of Maine and through project grants. It is administered and staffed by social science research and evaluation professionals in conjunction with College and University faculty.

The Center is an active participant in projects designed to improve school effectiveness and academic outcomes. It provides evaluation services, including fiscal, administrative, and curricular reviews. Towns and nonprofit organizations throughout Maine, New England, and Canada have contracted with the Center for school and community surveys, enrollment projections, building utilization studies, program evaluations, administrative structure reviews, financial analyses, school climate studies, and economic development studies. The Center is available as a resource to faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and public school officials who need consultation on research projects.

To stimulate discussion and promote policy developments, the Center designs and conducts qualitative and quantitative research about school conditions and practices. It disseminates research findings through analytical reviews and bulletins, and publishes original research in the Journal of Research in Rural Education and in a series of occasional papers produced in conjunction with the Penquis Superintendents' Association.

The Center provides Geographical Information Systems (GIS) models of education-related data and develops, scans, and analyzes machine readable surveys and questionnaires.

Among major research projects:

• UNUM - Sports, Schools & Learning Results
• NEASC Accreditation Surveys
• Policy Research Center
• UM/MPA Aspiration Benchmarking Initiative
• NSF Grant - Assessing the Impact of the Statewide System Initiatives on Teaching and Learning, Cross-state Comparisons and Case Studies

Recent publications of the Center can be downloaded from www.umaine.edu/edhd/research/crepubs.htm. Occasional Papers from the Center can be found on-line on The University of Maine's Fogler Library Web site at: libraries.maine.edu/cre/.

Center for Research and Evaluation staff:

• Walter Harris, Director
• Deb Allen, Research Associate/Policy Specialist
• Paul Davis, Research Assistant
• Brian Doore, Research Associate
• Janet Fairman, Assistant Research Professor
• Suzanne Hart, Research Associate/Policy Analyst
• Roxanne Lee, Administrative Assistant
• Mary Madden, Assistant Research Professor
• Brenda Peirce, Research Assistant
• Lori Smith, Research Associate
  

For further information, contact Walter Harris at (207) 581-2467 or complete this online form. Or you may wish to order publications provided by the center.