LEAD Center, Survey Center are partners

The latest piece of a long-range plan for a multipurpose grant-related resource has fallen into place with a new partnership between the university’s Learning through Evaluation, Adaptation and Dissemination (LEAD) Center and the UW–Madison Survey Center. Both are now housed in the College of Letters and Science.

Opened in 1994 in the College of Engineering, LEAD works with faculty and staff in any department or program to evaluate the impact and strengthen the strategies of educational and outreach programs. Employing an experienced staff with backgrounds in anthropology, psychology and sociology, LEAD is well-known at both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health for its reliable and incisive research.

According to Julie Foertsch, LEAD’s newly named director and a cognitive psychologist, the center is able to provide evaluation for programs in science, health, technology, social services, education and more.

“If you want your grant proposal to be accepted and your program to succeed, high-quality evaluation is essential,” she says. “The LEAD Center can provide faculty and administrators with the data and analysis they need to be able to measure a program’s outcomes and address any obstacles to success long before they affect the program’s viability.”

Mary Ann Fitzpatrick, deputy dean for Letters and Science, says she could not agree more. “The future of research, as well as education, depends on being able to provide timely evaluations and assessments of how well we are accomplishing our goals,” she says.

Information: http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~lead/ or 265-6368.