¡Hola! My name is MariaBelinda (MB), and I am a doctoral candidate in the Human Development and Family Science Program at the University of Arizona, with a thematic minor in Program Evaluation focused on Borderlands. I am also a recent alumna of the AEA GEDI internship, Cohort #20. I had the honor to learn and transform knowledge in this experience with other researchers, evaluators, and mentors in the evaluation field.
Through my internship and graduate studies, with the community’s support, I have developed essential evaluation insights to better serve historically and currently underserved communities. My passion lies in connecting my areas of interest—risk and resilience in families and program evaluation—to better honor these communities. As an emerging evaluator with CREE training and a deep commitment to ethical analysis, I offer the following insights:
- Connect. Ensure a genuine connection to your evaluation projects. As evaluators, we wield significant influence in guiding clients on future actions, identifying areas for improvement, or creating new services. It’s crucial to approach our work from a place of humility and self-awareness, recognizing our own positionality, biases, privileges, limitations, and strengths. This self-reflection enhances our ability to perform meaningful and impactful evaluative work by learning from others and sharing learning with others.
- Communicate. Effective evaluation relies on robust internal and external communication. Regular, structured exchanges within your team ensure deadlines are met, constructive feedback is provided, and the project progresses smoothly. Without consistent communication, the objectives and learnings of the evaluation risk being lost. On the other hand, strong communication allows us to address challenges and unexpected situations promptly, ensuring well-informed recommendations.
- Community. Evaluation is not a solitary endeavor; it thrives on community involvement. This includes collaboration with your team, fellow evaluators, and stakeholders, as well as meaningful engagement with the population being served. The ultimate goal of evaluation is to inform and drive positive change for specific populations. By connecting with and incorporating the perspectives of the community served, we enhance the sustainability and impact of our efforts. We achieve greater reach and depth when we work together, bringing diverse, intersectional perspectives to our CREE evaluations and upholding ethical diligence.
Hi everyone, my name is Millicent Esi Gyan, I am an international student from Ghana and a GEDI #20 cohort. I am an emerging CRE consultant with a masters degree in Applied Sociology from East Tennessee State University. I am looking forward to pursuing a PhD program in Applied Sociology at the University of Louisville, KY this Fall. My GEDI journey has been an insightful one. I have developed skills in providing technical assistance in Monitoring and Evaluation and how to use CRE lenses to conduct evaluations. I’d love to share some tips and rad resources here with you.
Hot Tips
- Data analysis integration and synthesis event (DAIS): This is a useful approach that allows multiple people to analyze data streams together as a team. During this event, findings and themes generated from evaluation can be projected and discussed for conclusions and interpretation.
- The Miro Platform is a great channel to organize your DAIS event. Download Miro on your device
- Cool tricks: Excel is a helpful tool in calculating and summarizing data to show trends and patterns in your data. This is really helpful when you mostly work on formatting large data for analyses.
Rad Resource
For a better understanding of the development of culture as an emerging CRE evaluator, I think this material would be helpful.
Lesson Learned
Being open to constructive feedback is a great opportunity to develop professionally as a CRE evaluator.
The American Evaluation Association is hosting Graduate Education Diversity Internship (GEDI) Program week. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from AEA’s GEDI Program and its interns. For more information on GEDI, see their webpage here. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.