The Mellon Foundation Assessment Project at Hamilton College

The Mellon Foundation Assessment Project at Hamilton College, now in its seventh year of funding, is a long-term project directed by Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology Daniel F. Chambliss to assess learning and outcomes of the liberal arts education and experience. Primarily through a longitudinal panel study of the class of 2005 running for all four of the students' college years, with an additional interview with the students a year after graduating, the project attempts to plot the main paths students take through college, and identify the primary factors that shape the student experience. As a holistic study, it examines not just students’ academic, but social and extracurricular worlds as well, and considers study of all three as necessary to understanding the student experience.

Chris Takacs has worked on the Assessment Project since 2003, first as a student interviewer, then as a data analyst, and later by writing progress reports. In 2006, Takacs and Chambliss began work on a book project, tentatively titled A Meeting of Minds, based directly on the data and findings of the Assessment Project.

A Meeting of Minds

A Meeting of Minds examines the academic and social lives of students of Liberal Arts Colleges. Based on the data and research from the Mellon Foundation Assessment Project at Hamilton College, Meeting charts the paths of students through and beyond their time in college in an attempt to identify the forces that shape the student experience. Writing both for students to gain a greater understanding of their own experience, and for faculty and administrators to be able to better design curricula and structure their institution in a way that best benefits students, Chambliss and Takacs argue that the social nature of the residential college is the key to understanding what students get out of their Liberal Arts experience, and why.