The goal of a program is to address a problem or need. In an evaluation plan, the written goal should state the problem the program addresses or describe the rationale for the program. The goal should also state the expected accomplishments of the program.

Think about these questions in relation to your program:

• What problem or need does your program address, or what is the rationale for creating the program?
  
  
• What is your solution to this problem or need, that is, what do you expect the program to accomplish?

You might answer these questions like this:

We would like our undergraduates to gain experience in research, but currently there are few opportunities for them to do research. We have graduate students who are doing research, so we thought we could have the undergraduates work with the graduate students on their research projects. The graduate students would mentor them. After talking with other schools with mentoring programs, we realized that the graduate students need to know how to be a mentor. So we want to create a program to teach them how to be a mentor.

You can then summarize the answer into a program goal.

EXAMPLE

Below is an example of a program goal. The first two sentences describe the problem; the last sentence states the expected accomplishments of the program.

Undergraduate students lack opportunities for obtaining a quality research experience. Graduate students are not trained for their mentoring roles with undergraduate students.

Our goal is to create and implement a program to train graduate students as research mentors.

WRITE YOUR OWN GOAL

In your Evaluation Plan tool enter your program goal in column 1.

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