Since 2008, the number of homeless students identified by public schools each year across the nation has increased by more than 100%, from approximately 680,000 to 1,384,000 students in 2019-20. (National School Board Association and and National Center for Education Statistics data/websites). According to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, homeless students are defined as students who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, that includes students living in shared …
News and Updates
Once An Educator, Always An Educator
All of us at MNA have either taught in K-12 and/or 2-and-4 year institutions in the US and abroad. We bring our classroom teaching experiences to all our grant evaluation work with our clients. One of the grants that we are immensely attracted to is the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce teacher scholarship grant that aims to serve the national need for highly-qualified and diverse teachers of STEM. It is a known fact that the nation faces significant disparity in the percentage of …
‘Tis The Season Of Conferencing
A few weeks ago, I posted on an upcoming in-person conference and my (personal) anxieties around traveling and attending an in-person conference in over 2 years. Well, I am happy to report that I had a very pleasant experience at The Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) conference for the National Professional Development (NPD) grants. Several project directors and evaluators were in attendance from across the country. I didn't count, but I am guessing maybe ~250? MNA is an …
Know the (Procurement) Rules Before You Play The Game
"OMG, I got played by a client who promised me work!" "They took my evaluation plan (writing) and gave the work to someone else." "I spent hours planning and collaborating on the proposal; wrote the full evaluation plan, yet, they put the work up for a bid and awarded the work to someone else." "I lost the work to the lowest bidder." "They stole my work!" "The client awarded the work to someone else and they are now not even responding to my emails or answering my calls." "I …
Does This RFP Spark Joy? Definitely, Maybe?
Honest truth: In my career as a K-20 researcher and program evaluator, I have responded to numerous open response to proposals (RFPs) and spent an inordinate amount of time critically thinking, planning, collaborating, collecting documents and references (including notarized documents), and submitting both short-and-long proposals to various potential clients/funders. And I speak from experience, sometimes, high risk doesn't equate to high rewards. Responding to RFPs takes a lot of time. …
51st NSF Grant Evaluation Work Comes From….
MNA's 51st National Science Foundation (NSF) grant evaluation contract comes from San Jose State University (SJSU) for its recently awarded Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering and Computer Science to help support summer research experiences for a total of 30 San Jose-based high school educators to foster long-term collaborations between SJSU and school districts. During the 3-year program, the participating teachers will develop an Education Transfer Plan (ETP), a blueprint …
It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane…..It’s NASA’s P-3 Research Aircraft!
MNA is very proud to evaluate the 5-year NASA’s Student Airborne Science Activation, or "SaSa," (in Kiswahili meaning, Now) program. SaSa is on a mission to broaden the ethnic and racial diversity of researchers in the Earth/Geosciences. To achieve this goal, SaSa will train up to 25 undergraduate applicants each year (freshmen and sophomores) who will be competitively selected from six Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) including: Coppin State University, Hampton University, Howard …
Two for Twosday!
On the grandest palindrome and ambigram day of 2022, I am pulling two FAQs from my various evaluation presentations. 1. Are there any specific academic qualifications needed to become an evaluator? It depends! However, I would like to emphasize that since evaluation requires a fair amount of data collection both on and off field, data cleaning, coding, analyses, interpretation, presentation, and report writing—most of the time customized to clients’/stakeholders’ needs—having some prior …
Are You Ready to CRISPR?
The goal of the National Science Foundation's Research Coordination Networks in Undergraduate Biology Education (NSF RCN-UBE) program is to link biological research discoveries with innovations in biology education to improve the learning environment in undergraduate biology classrooms. We are excited to begin new evaluation work for a recently awarded RCN-UBE to the University of Houston (main campus) and its partners from: Hampden-Sydney College, University of Alabama-Birmingham, University …
Oh, For The Love Of….Meeting Notes
Happy Valentine's Day. Today's post is an ode to taking better meeting notes. Most of us are constantly hopping from one virtual meeting to the next to the extent that we believe that we simply couldn't survive without having our Outlook/Google calendars by our side to remind us when the next meeting time is coming up. Snooze, Dismiss, Attend. Yes, No, Maybe. Tentative. In some cases, we have also wondered, "Wait, why are we meeting again?" "What's the meeting about?" "Did we have …