Parent educators at Michigan State University Extension have had great success with their Extension Extras Parenting Hour series which began in 2020. The series is organized every quarter, meets weekly, and changes topics every week. The 90 minute class covers a range of parenting topics from positive discipline, talking to children about race,…

This paper describes an eight-year study evaluating the effectiveness and impact of grant writing workshops on the ability of faculty attendees to apply learning to secure internal research grants. Longitudinal tracking of all grant awardees (N=485) was conducted four years prior to the creation of the workshops and four years after the workshops…

This article describes an innovative evaluation plan we employed to capture outcomes of a multiyear beginning farmer program and, specifically, highlights the facilitation technique we used to document short-term and intermediate goals of the program that matched U.S. Department of Agriculture grant requirements and Extension administration…

Today's children spend less and less time in the outdoors, leading Richard Louv in 2008 to coin the term "nature deficit disorder." Louv pointed out that experiences with nature are essential to a child's physical and emotional development and that the lack of these types of experiences has led to an increase in child obesity, attention…

"Listening to the River" (LTTR) is a watershed science education project funded by the National Science Foundation. The project aims to deliver watershed education experiences in and around Traverse City, Michigan, and also to develop a model that can be replicated in other locations. Inverness Research was contracted by the…

Questionnaires were sent to 307 persons, with 135 responses returned (40%), to determine who had used the Michigan Consumer Education Center services and to determine attitudes toward Center services. Five categories of persons were contacted: Those local representatives who had coordinated inservice training sessions provided by the Center; 1973…

To ascertain the effectiveness of the inservice approaches utilized in the original Michigan Vocational Education Advisory Committee Project, a followup state survey was conducted. The original project, to improve the operating effectiveness of vocational education advisory committees throughout the state, involved (1) development of a guide to…

The Senior Adult Education Program (SAEP) for Monroe County, Michigan, conducted a documentation and analysis of the program component that provides high school completion classes in two local nursing homes. Three general research questions were (1) benefits to nursing home residents from the programs, (2) design of classes in nursing homes…