Program Evaluation

Bass Connections has an enduring impact on participants.

In addition to our annual evaluation (see the 2021-2022 report), we have been focusing our evaluation efforts on identifying impact trends across multiple years.

Undergraduate Student Development

Over the past three years, Bass Connections has partnered with the Trinity Office of Assessment to administer a pre- and post-participation survey to undergraduates participating in Bass Connections and a comparison group of undergraduates.

Each group was asked to respond to 26 questions at the beginning and end of the year related to critical thinking, teamwork, communication and research skills. In each of the three years, students participating in Bass Connections reported statistically significant gains (measured as a confidence level of p<.05) in multiple survey areas, while students in the comparison group did not report statistically significant gains on any of the survey items in any year.

Looking at the trends from this assessment across all three years, we found significant improvements in at least two of the three years for eight of 26 survey items for Bass Connections participants. These items were:

Research Skills

Developing an actionable research question

Identifying appropriate research methods based on a given research question

Navigating the IRB process

Communication & Teamwork

Effectively communicating my ideas to faculty and students from different fields of study

Building on the ideas of others to move a team forward

Feeling comfortable providing input to individuals more senior than myself (e.g., faculty)

Project Management

Developing a plan to execute on a long-term project

Helping define a role for myself when I am unclear about roles on a team

“Learning to work on a team in a research setting was very meaningful. I learned a lot from my teammates themselves, and also how to collaborate and understand others’ perspectives.”
Undergraduate student

Graduate and Professional Student Impact

Over the past three years, we asked graduate and professional students to rank the top three skills they developed by participating in Bass Connections. They most frequently reported benefiting from developing their capacity to organize and manage projects, work with team members from diverse areas of knowledge and communicate with a team — skills that are critical regardless of one’s career path. These trends also reinforce the findings above related to undergraduate student impact.

Rank of top skills developed through the program over three years (2019-2020 to 2021-2022)

Organizing and managing projects

Working with team members from diverse areas of knowledge

Communicating with a team

“My Bass Connections project reinjected an enthusiasm for science at a time during my Ph.D. when I was otherwise stalling. It helped me reconnect with the value of my work and seeded career-changing collaborations. My team coleaders were fantastic mentors, who made me feel valued, and were incredibly flexible as I navigated the end of my Ph.D. work.”
Graduate student