Laurie Van Egeren

Professional Title
Director
Organization/Institution
About Me (Bio)
Laurie Van Egeren, Ph.D., is the director of the Community Evaluation and Research Collaborative and the co-director of the National Collaborative for the Study of University Engagement. Dr. Van Egeren conducts both program evaluations and basic research, and has worked on a number of evaluations for the State of Michigan. Among these are the 21st Century Community Learning Centers statewide evaluation, which is examining the effectiveness of after-school programming for students' academic achievement and socioemotional functioning, and the All Students Achieve Program - Parent Involvement in Education (ASAP-PIE) evaluation, which focused on improving parenting in order to encourage school readiness in children from birth to 5 years. Van Egeren also conducts evaluation in community and economic development, early childhood science education, technological capacity building and co-parenting and family relationships. She holds a Ph.D. in developmental psychology and a M.A. in child and family clinical psychology from Michigan State University.
Keywords
Michigan State University (MSU), Grand Valley State University (GVSU)
08/15/2011

The research goal of this project is to evaluate whether an early childhood science education program, implemented in low-income preschool settings produces measurable impacts for children, teachers, and parents. The study is determining the efficacy of the program on Science curriculum in two models, one in which teachers participate in professional development activities (the intervention), and another in which teachers receive the curriculum and teachers' guide but no professional development (the control).