Hi, I’m Ann Emery. All this week, you’ll hear from members of the Washington Evaluators about the diversity of evaluation opportunities that are available in DC. Evaluation is booming in DC! This is the best city in the world for evaluators because we can choose to specialize in one area or try out different settings, approaches, and content areas throughout our careers.
Hot Tip: The only thing hotter than our humidity is our evaluation scene. Evaluators can choose to work in government agencies, non-profits, foundations, consulting firms, public schools, charter schools, or universities (like American, Catholic, UDC, Gallaudet, George Mason, George Washington, Georgetown, Howard, and the University of Maryland, just to name a few…). Would you rather be an evaluator in the suburbs? You can also work for Virginia or Maryland’s local government or award-winning school districts.
Lesson Learned: Considering moving to DC? Don’t be alarmed by our bad traffic – we’ve got the cleanest metro system in the world, three airports, Amtrak, VRE, and MARC trains, pedicabs, and some of the best bicycling trails and bike commuting in the nation. And we’ll have streetcars next year! Still running late to work? You can always blame it on the presidential motorcade…
Hot Tip: Need a break from evaluating programs? On the weekends, DC evaluators can put their skills to use by evaluating the Cherry Blossoms, Redskins, food trucks, farmers markets, museums, nightlife, or even Michele Obama’s fashion choices. Still need something to do? Don’t worry, Washingtonians can talk about politics for hours!
Rad Resource: Visiting DC for a few days? Connect with the Washington Evaluators, Eastern Evaluation Research Society, or the nearby Baltimore Area Evaluators. You can mingle with evaluators at one of our happy hours or attend a brown bag while you’re in town. We welcome visitors to the Washington Evaluators monthly board meetings, and with meetings at hip restaurants in Chinatown, you can’t go wrong.
The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Washington Evaluators (WE) Affiliate Week with our colleagues in the WE AEA Affiliate. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our WE members. 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.
Hi Susan,
Great point! DC is a hub for evaluation conferences, meetings, and trainings.
In addition to the AEA/Environmental Evaluators Network unconference in July (http://www.environmentalevaluators.net/2012-een-forum/), I just learned about the Welfare Research and Evaluation Conference by the Administration for Children and Families (http://wrconference.net/).
AND DC’s turning into a central training location for data visualization. I went to Cole Nussbaumer’s training last week (http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/), Andy Kirk’s training is tomorrow (http://www.visualisingdata.com/), and I hear that AEA’s own Stephanie Evergreen will be in town to give dataviz training later this week (http://evereval.wordpress.com/).
– Ann
Ann, I can’t wait to get to DC! I wanted to add an item to your list – this summer, AEA is co-convening an Unconference with our colleagues at the Environmental Evaluators Network (EEN) in July. Hope to see lots of DC evaluators there! http://www.environmentalevaluators.net/2012-een-forum/