For the past weeks Chris and i have been continuing to organize the site visits between UM evaluation class and the University partners. The week ending Oct. 19th we spent in conversation with partners regarding details of the visits and assurance of the overall goal of the visits and the value of student level data.  Chris and I also attended to details for our site visits.  This has been challenging trying to get all of the logistics and facilitating cooperation, looking for opportunities where schedules permitted communication and completing the logic models, U evaluation plan, interviews and visits to feeder schools. Ferris and CMU were the last U partners to finalize details. To further support this process Chris and I visited the UM class and met with students with the latest updates.  Also important Sue Ann reviewed the interview script with myself to ensure that it accurately reflected the key data required for the development of the student level database.  She and i also discussed the creation of an observation form and interview protocol for former gear up students;  all of which is important to the triangulation process. We  hope that students will have an opportunity to do 2 out of 3 of the evaluation aspects of the visit.

Now Chris and I began to work on finalizing details for our UP visit;  we obtained an itinerary from Cody, MTU and Shelley--LSSU.  Shirley NMU was out of the office so we just agreed to go with a tentative plan. Additional calls were made to UP student team regarding availability and their roles; also we discussed skype, conference call plan b details as UP cell reception could be a problem.

We then reviewed the newsletter.  Dr.gant had indicated four areas that the newsletter could cover:  evaluation update, parent involvement, community resources-best practices and community events.