Uncategorized

Hi, I’m Midjina Richard, MPH, CHES. I’m an Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) Fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. in Atlanta, Georgia. Before becoming a fellow, I had recently graduated from the University of Georgia and was just starting my public health career. I had some assumptions about my new position, but I wasn’t sure what to expect especially after finding out I had to work with a co-fellow. Collaboration in the workplace amazed me. It was so different from the competition in my graduate program. I want to share some lessons I learned that helped me with this transition from school to work.

Hi! I’m Amy Washbush, Associate Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies. Through our Co-Create team we partner with nonprofit organizations and others to answer the evaluation and research questions that can make communities better.

After having babies with the support of a birth doula, I decided to train as one myself. I supported friends as they prepared, gave birth, and adapted to their lives as parents. This transformative experience shifted how I see the world and can contribute to it, including in my work as an evaluator.

Hello, AEA365 community! We are Orna Ehrlich (Vice President, Strategic Impact) and Mary Harkins-Schwarz (Senior Director, Health Services Research). We work for the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, a non-profit, volunteer-fueled organization dedicated to finding cures for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, and improving the quality of life of children and adults
affected by these diseases.

We are AEA’s Student Evaluation Case Competition Working Group: Dana Linnell – Chair, Asma Ali, Brianna Crumly, Carolina De La Rosa Mateo, Rana Gautam, Meg Johnson, Gabriel Keney, Jonny Morell, Steve Mumford, Julian Nyamupachitu, Elena Polush, and Jennifer Yessis. Last year, we held the inaugural US Student Evaluation Case Competition, which we shared in a previous blog post on AEA365. In this year’s update, we announce the winning team and talk about how you can connect and be involved in this work going forward.

“In its own way, evaluation is a process of art.” Crystal Meneses My name is Crystal Meneses, and I am an interdisciplinary artist who engages in arts practices that inspire social change. I speak creativity and my dialects are music, visual arts, and storytelling. I am also neurodivergent, queer, and a woman of color – these …

LAWG Week: Learning New Languages Together: Communication Across Evaluation and Art by Crystal Meneses Read More »

We are Amani Austin, founder of Austin Advocates With, LLC, and Katie Winters, principal consultant for Insight for Action, LLC. Amani is most proud of her lived experience as a black woman and a first-generation college graduate using the wisdom of her lived experience and cultural wealth to shape her approach to evaluation and facilitation. …

LAWG Week: Equitable Evaluators as Collaborators and Co-creators in Shifting Evaluation Practice: Unlearning White Supremacy Culture by Amani Austin and Katie Winters Read More »

We are Nelda Reyes, of AB Cultural Drivers, and Kim Leonard, Leonard Research & Evaluation (pictured here with Ingrid, one of the Alliance business coaches, during a site visit to her office in early 2024). We have been working in partnership on an evaluation of the Oregon Child Care Alliance, and appreciate this opportunity to …

LAWG Week: The Art of the Community Engagement Spectrum in Evaluation by Kim Leonard and Nelda Reyes Read More »

We are Oregon State University’s STEM Research Center (SRC), a team of dedicated professionals of various disciplinary backgrounds who conduct applied research and evaluation on STEM learning and education, science communication, and STEM engagement (figure 1).  Working at the intersection of research, practice, and policy, we focus on equity and social justice and strive to …

LAWG Week: A Totality Awe-some Eclipse: OSU’s STEM Research Center Conducts Evaluation during the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse by Oregon State University’s STEM Research Center Read More »

I’m Steve Patty with Dialogues In Action. Over the past decade, my team has worked with over 500 organizations, mostly nonprofits, to build their capacity to do credible self-studies of their impact. Helping people do a self-study can be brilliant. It can also be fraught with peril. These are a few lessons learned we’ve learned …

LAWG Week: Secrets to Guiding a Self-Study: Helping People Evaluate for Themselves by Steve Patty Read More »

Greetings! We’re Jean-Marie Callan and Becky Seel, members of the Oregon Community Foundation (OCF) Research & Learning team who enjoy exploring opportunities to learn among and alongside the projects we fund. In Oregon, Chinook salmon migrate many miles from the Pacific Ocean back to their natal waters in the Columbia River Basin, aided by inherited …

LAWG Week: Evaluating From the Ground Up with Learning Communities by Jean-Marie Callan and Becky Seel Read More »