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University departments that offer graduate programs require feedback to assess the quality of the education they offer. Feedback on the quality of education is provided in the form of program evaluation. In the general approach to program evaluation, outsiders, i.e., people who are not parts of a program, do the evaluation. This descriptive study starts out with the belief that the best feedback in program evaluation can only come from insiders, i.e., faculty, students, and alumni, who are parts of a particular program. In order to capture the perspectives of insiders on the quality related characteristics of a program, this study evaluated a master&rsquo / s degree program in TESOL (Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages) at an American university in a practical and cost-effective way, using a minimum number of evaluators. All faculty, students, and alumni of the program form the participants in this study. Regular program evaluation studies are conducted to do one type of evaluation only and they do not seek insiders&rsquo / opinions. Unlike such studies, this evaluative research study aims to go beyond that familiar narrow focus and provide a richer description of the program it evaluates. Its research design and the data collection methods employed in it are chosen to achieve that goal. These enable the present study to have a broader scope than those of the regular program evaluation studies as the collected data can be used for more than one type of analysis. The results of data collection show that all parties express positive opinion on the aspects of the program that are directly related to the teaching that takes place in classes. Areas of the program that need improvement are also introduced, and recommendations to overcome them are presented.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / The objective of this thesis is to estimate and explain the effects of graduate education and other factors on promotion to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (O-5) in the US Army. Our focus was primarily on determining whether graduate education provides officers with higher promotion probabilities. Besides graduate education, data that were analyzed include basic demographic traits, the officers' prior enlisted status, and their commissioning source information. The data used in this study were taken from the Active Duty Military Master File for fiscal years 1981 through 2001. This study develops multivariate logit regression and classification tree models to examine and explore the structure of the data sets. Both the regression models and the classification trees yielded positive results for the effect of graduate education on promotion. According to the regression model results, the odds ratio associated with graduate education is between 1.79 and 2.25. Military Academy and ROTC/Scholarship graduates have higher promotion probabilities than those from other sources, and married officers have higher rates than single officers. Additionally, age has a negative effect on promotion; that is, promotion probability decreases with age. Prior enlisted status, number of dependents, gender, race, and DOD primary occupation code do not seem to have statistically significant effects on promotion. / First Lieutenant, Turkish Army