Outreach

Volunteer Program Assessment (VPA, pronounced vee-pah):

VPA is a cutting-edge, innovative, and completely free volunteer assessment system designed to promote nonprofit organizational effectiveness.

The Volunteer Program Assessment (VPA) was developed in 2009 by students and faculty in the Organizational Science doctoral program.

VPA is an online survey that measures a number of key individual (e.g., satisfaction with communication) and organizational outcomes (e.g., intentions to quit). VPA consultants work with clients to guide them through the survey process, support the survey collection, create aggregated results reports, and interpret the survey results. Thanks to grants and support from the Humane Society of the United States and UNC Charlotte, clients receive this service at no cost.

Since its founding, VPA has served over 100 volunteer programs from across the United States and Canada. VPA currently has 8 active university partners: George Mason University, Northern Illinois University, University of Georgia, Colorado State University, Wright State University, Rice University, Baruch College, and most recently, University of Houston. Through continued and expanded outreach efforts, VPA strives to provide an opportunity for volunteer managers to learn, meet, and grow.

For more information regarding VPA please visit this media report:

UNC Charlotte’s Innovative Assessment System Helps Non Profits Nurture Volunteers

For more information regarding VPA please visit its website.

Dr. Shawn Long Organizational Science Institute (formerly OSSI):

  • The Dr. Shawn Long Organizational Science Institute is designed to provide underrepresented undergraduate students with a unique educational opportunity by providing experiences to foster interest and ability in research, scholarship, application and graduate study while in a supportive graduate climate that values multiple diverse perspectives (e.g. disciplinary, demographic, methodology, and intellectual).
  • The Dr. Shawn Long Organizational Science Institute is designed to provide underrepresented undergraduate students with a unique educational opportunity with the following goals:
    • Foster undergraduate interest and ability in research, scholarship, application and graduate study
    • Provide hands on development of research conceptualization, writing, and presentation skills and intense GRE training
    • Expose students to a supportive graduate climate that values multiple diverse perspectives (e.g. disciplinary, demographic, methodology, and intellectual)
    • Demonstrate to participants that a career in organizational science offers an exciting challenge and that they are fully capable of such careers
    • Ten rising juniors and seniors (from this point called “Fellows”) from around the US will be housed at UNC Charlotte. Participants of the Organizational Science Institute will engage in a number of activities including, but not limited to.
    • One-on-one meetings with faculty and current graduate students to discuss research interests and develop a research project
    • GRE prep classes
    • Networking with other participants
    • Meeting with successful professionals in the field of Organizational Science
    • Intensive seminars on the research process
  • For more information regarding The Dr. Shawn Long Organizational Science Institute please visit its website.

The Power of Yet:

  • The Power of Yet is a school-based youth development program intended to introduce elementary-grade students to concepts of growth mindset, self-leadership, resilience and self-talk to promote healthy coping strategies to persist in tasks toward more positive educational outcomes.
  • “Drawing from psychology, education, and management literature focusing on self-leadership, the “Yet” program encourages interaction and internalization of concepts such as “growing the brain,” and “stinkin’ thinking,” while modeling how to reframe set-backs to things students have not mastered…”yet”” (Rogelberg, Uhrich, Caudill, Gur, Moffit, Williams, & Rogelberg, 2016).
  • For more information, please see this publication in the Journal of Youth Development.