Announcing the 2025 C-STAR Awardees!
HSI Initiatives, Assessment and Research, and Societal Impacts, are pleased to announce the inaugural recipients of the “Completion Strategies Tested for Acceleration & Refinement” (C-STAR) internal funding competition. Aligned with the university’s strategic imperative regarding success for all students, the goal of C-STAR is to use a data informed approach to identify strategies, programs and practices that positively contribute to degree completion at the UA.
2025 Funded Projects
“Building a Case for Biocalculus”
Project Lead: Lauren Harrison, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
This project will compare student outcomes (retention, graduation, and time-to-degree) from two Calculus I pathways to determine which path most positively impacts undergraduate student success.
“Evaluation of the Efficacy of the UA VIP Program to Improve Student Retention and Graduation Rates”
Project Lead: Dr. David Stephen Margolis, Orthopedic Surgery, College of Medicine
This project will analyze 5 years of existing quantitative and qualitative data for the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program to determine the extent to which the program contributes to retention, graduation, and overall student success.
“Understanding Impact of AIR Education Program Internships”
Project Lead: Maria Sohn Hasman
This project will compare retention and graduation rates for 2 Arizona Institute for Resilience (AIR) student internship experiences, the “RISE” and “Earth Grant” programs.
Recipients of C-STAR will receive data evaluation support from the UA Office of Assessment & Research.
Results will be shared with the the UA community in fall 2026.
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NEW Internal Funding Opportunity - CALL FOR PROPOSALS - Proposals due June 27, 2025
A collaborative initiative between HSI Initiatives, Assessment and Research, and RII's Societal Impacts, is pleased to offer a new funding opportunity for the University of Arizona (UA) community, called “Completion Strategies Tested for Acceleration & Refinement” (C-STAR). The goal of the C-STAR opportunity is to identify strategies, programs, and practices that positively contribute to degree completion at the UA. The UA has a 6-year graduation rate of 68% for undergraduates and a 4-year graduation rate of 53%; these rates currently fall behind average rates from our peer institutions (4-year average for 11 peer institutions is 66.2%). There are numerous contributing factors that affect degree attainment, both positively and negatively, and many ways to measure these impacts.
Aligned with the university’s strategic imperative regarding success for every student, the goal of this internal fund is to increase our institutional understanding of the levers that positively contribute to students’ degree completion at the UA. Many programs collect data but are limited in their capacity for analyses and communication of findings. This project will provide funding for the expertise needed to explore such data to uncover insights regarding impact on degree completion by linking up awardees with data analysts in the UA’s office of Assessment and Research (A & R).
Please note that this opportunity is not intended to support new programs, initiatives or data collection efforts.
Projects chosen for funding will begin, extend, or more robustly evaluate UA programs through a collaboration with the A & R data analyst team. Analysis of the data should work towards answering the following inquiries:
- WHAT: To what extent does this strategy, program, or practice contribute to degree completion?
- WHO: For whom does this strategy work? Is this program especially impactful for particular groups of students?
- HOW: Under what circumstances is this strategy impactful? What strategies are used and for what reasons?
Awardees will be expected to summarize their key findings in a final report to be widely disseminated across the University.
Eligibility
This internal grant program is open to all faculty, staff and administrators across all disciplines and ranks at the UA.
Selection Process
The Review Committee will evaluate proposals based on the following criteria:
- Access to existing relevant student data
- Clarity and feasibility of proposed activities
- Rationale for how the proposed activity will enhance understanding of degree attainment efforts
- Assessment plan for identifying impact on degree progress or completion
- Potential for scaling and sustaining efforts
Awards
Up to three teams will be selected to work directly with data analysts in A & R to implement their project. Funding from UA sponsors will provide the resources required to hire a half-time Ph.D. Graduate Associate skilled in data analytics to assist with the analyses of program data.
Additional funding may be requested for incidentals related to this project, up to $2,000.
Overall Project Expectations
Awardees agree to the following project expectations:
- Kick-off meeting within 1 month of award between project team and A&R
- Minimum of 1 meeting / month between Project Lead and A&R
- Data-Driven Decision Making Modules: Project Lead (or at least 1 member of the team) must agree to participate in a virtual (asynchronous) learning series on Data-Driven Decision Making, offered by the AAAS’ SEA Change Institute.
- Dissemination of project results to campus stakeholders
- Final report (max 5 pages) and 1-2 page handout with key project findings
Timeline
- Proposals due: June 27, 2025
- Award notifications: by August 15, 2025 (revised)
- Performance Period: September 1, 2025 – August 31, 2026
Additional details and the application may be found HERE: https://azcultivate.arizona.edu/#competitionDetail/1979566
Flyer:
For questions, please contact Riley McIsaac, director HSI Grants Development (rmcisaac@arizona.edu)