Power to make positive change
Pre-survey75%Post-survey100%
Collaboratory Findings
Early descriptive evidence for local learning
The 2025 evaluation offers a bounded view of participants’ reported experience before, during, and after the summer process. The findings support reflection and program refinement. Stronger research designs would be needed to assess causal impact.
Local evaluation evidence
Survey responses moved in favorable directions across agency, belonging, respect, recognition, vision, and participation.
Twenty-six regional-campus faculty completed the summer process. The established pre- and post-survey findings document aggregate change in the share of favorable responses.
How the findings are reported: Agency and belonging are shown with their pre- and post-survey percentages. The other measures retain the percentage-point changes established in the earlier evaluation analysis.
Pre- and post-survey percentages
Strong sense of belonging
Pre-survey79%Post-survey91%
Additional documented shifts
Change in the favorable-response share from pre- to post-survey
Favorable perceptions of respect and trust
Alignment with institutional vision
Agreement that faculty contributions are valued
Comfort engaging in institutional processes
Qualitative evidence
What participants brought into the work
Seventeen participants responded to seven open-ended prompts before the intensive ideation work. The analysis used the full response set while keeping individual responses private.
Access and relational learning
Participants emphasized affordable, place-based access to higher education, smaller learning environments, and sustained relationships with students.
Community embeddedness
Regional campuses were described as educational, economic, civic, and cultural resources with deep ties to the communities they serve.
Cohesion with local responsiveness
Participants wanted stronger cross-campus coordination while preserving the ability to respond to distinct community conditions and needs.
Recognition and public narrative
Responses identified persistent perceptions that regional campuses, their students, and their faculty are less rigorous, capable, or valuable than their university counterparts.
Reported learning and development
What became more visible through the process
Closing reflections and project records emphasized several developments in how participants described the work. Because the sources were analyzed separately, the themes describe group-level patterns. A matched analysis would be needed to trace change for individual respondents.
Trust as working infrastructure
Closing reflections emphasized that relationship-building, careful listening, and structured dialogue supported candid collaboration across familiar boundaries.
Agency and shared capacity
Participants described greater readiness to contribute, connect their expertise to institutional challenges, and work with others toward change.
A more systemic view
Later project records placed greater emphasis on interdependence, cross-unit partnership, existing assets, and coordinated action across roles and units.
Structural support remains necessary
Time, recognition, leadership support, continued coaching, and infrastructure remained important conditions for carrying learning into sustained action.
Appropriate uses
These findings can support
- Evidence of favorable aggregate movement across the reported survey measures
- A clearer account of the concerns and assets participants brought into the process
- Questions for strengthening facilitation, coaching, recognition, and implementation support
- A baseline for designing more rigorous follow-up evaluation
Important limits
Questions that require further evidence
- How much any individual participant changed
- That the Collaboratory alone caused the observed differences
- Statistical significance or matched individual change from the public aggregate results alone
- Long-term institutional or student outcomes, or transfer to another cohort or context