Center for Research on Education, Engagement, and Development

Columbia University’s Center for Research on Education, Engagement, and Development (CREED) aims to bring together resources of high-quality evaluation and research design among scholars and practitioners interested in education and childhood development. Increasingly, not-for-profit organizations and individuals come to Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS) faculty and staff for aid with constructing high-quality research and evaluation plans indicating a greater need for a center for evaluation within Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) that is closely linked to practice and policy. Originating from the faculty within the QMSS Master of Arts program at Columbia University, CREED takes interdisciplinary methodologies developed as a part of the QMSS program and its home within ISERP.

 

The staff of CREED have published extensively in the areas of education, engagement and development. They also have significant experience in policy evaluation and implementation methodolgies, as well as their work in the academic field related to QMSS. The framework of CREED rests on the foundations of the QMSS staff as well as the ability to hire research assistants and consultants to serve as a resource for those seeking to perform high-quality evaluations of education, engagement and development.

 

The first project under CREED’s umbrella will be its work with Common Cents Penny Harvest Program which is already occuring. CREED has already published work on the first wave of this evaluation under QMSS/ISERP and is continuing data collection, evaluation of collection materials and processes, and grant-seeking to expand collection to more Penny Harvest sites.