Graduate Psychology faculty Sara Finney recognized with the Distinguished Service Award from CHBS
College of Health and Behavioral Studies
Sara Finney, PhD, faculty member in the Department of Graduate Psychology, is the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the College of Health and Behavioral Studies.
The Distinguished Service Award recognizes superlative achievement in service for CHBS faculty who have completed at least five years of service at JMU. Criteria include demonstrating a depth and breadth of outstanding service at the university, local, regional and national level and must have taken on a variety of roles and responsibilities including leadership positions at these different levels.
Finney serves as the Associate Director for the Center for Assessment and Research Studies (CARS), which supports units at JMU to use data to inform curricular changes, resulting in more effective programs for thousands of JMU students. Finney’s service related to outcomes assessment in higher education has been recognized with six national awards.
Her work with CARS includes providing service for the Center for Global Engagement, which highlighted distinct needs of international students and emphasized a need for differentiated resources and supports for them. Her service with the Office of Student Accountability and Restorative Practices provided data to justify the sunsetting of existing programming to open an opportunity to offer more effective programs and reduce costs. She also served the Ethical Reasoning in Action to specify their program theory. The program theory is now being shared nationally and internationally to help other institutions increase ethical reasoning.
In addition to working with colleagues to enhance their assessment efforts, Finney also creates, sequences and offers professional development experiences in assessment, measurement and evidence-informed programming. These professional development opportunities are offered internally at JMU and externally to other institutions through multi-hour workshops, several day training sessions, semester-long reading groups, webinars and asynchronous materials.
Finney was invited by the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) to update the national CAS standards. Finney added two new standards, Program Theory and Implementation Fidelity. These changes will transform current assessment practice in higher education.
Over the last three years, Finney created a free rubric to prompt the inclusion of equity into educational programming and the assessment of program effectiveness. The rubric facilitates high-quality program reviews necessary for institutional accountability mandates and improvement efforts at higher education institutions. This rubric was shared on a national stage in March 2024 and received a national award this spring.
In addition to these examples, Finney serves on several technical advisory committees, editorial boards, and other organizations in the assessment and measurement communities. Overall, Finney’s service contributions at the department, university, national and international levels are widely impactful and supportive of the development and success of others.
