Welcome to the Chicagoland Evaluation Association’s (CEA) week of AEA 365. We are Asma Ali, President and Leah C. Neubauer, Past President of CEA. CEA begin many years ago as a forum for evaluation professionals and students in the Chicagoland area to network, exchange ideas and knowledge, and participate in professional development activities that promote excellence in evaluation.
CEA as an AEA Local Affiliate
As the lead post for this week, we offer insights and resources about AEA Local Affiliates. Local Affiliates are our linkage to a network of other local evaluators and evaluations. CEA has benefitted tremendously in the last year from its participation in Local Affiliate activities. Our interactions with the Local Affiliate Groups have supported our learning about successful affiliate strategies, facilitated new programming and professional connections, and introduced us to inspiring evaluators throughout AEA. As a result, CEA has expanded programming, updated its communications strategy, and revitalized its member rosters.
Affiliates as Evaluator Learning Spaces
As evaluators, how do we create opportunities to learn, grow and enrich our practice? What happens in our post-formal education and training lives to facilitate new learning and growth? Through the lens of adult and continuing education, affiliates function as local communities of practice (CoP) and homegrown entities that promote various types of learning and growth within and among evaluators.
CEA member blogs this week
One benefit of our participation has been an expanded national and local evaluation communities of practice (CoP), which are featured throughout this week’s CEA blog. CEA has organized a stimulating week of posts that address the evaluation-related work of our members including topics on: local affiliate experiences, after school programming and youth voices in evaluation, a new network for Latina Researchers, evaluating community engagements, and sexual and gender minority communities (SGM). This is our third week of featured posts. Check out our previous work here.
Rad Resource #1: CEA Affiliate Website. Are you in the Chicagoland and surrounding area, looking to collaborate with someone based in Chicago, or interested in our affiliate work and professional development opportunities? Check out the CEA website or email Asma (CEA President) at asma.ali1@gmail.com for more information.
Rad Resource #2: AEA Local Affiliates. Are you involved in your local AEA affiliate? A list of affiliates, contact information, websites, conference archives, helpful links and a variety of evaluation websites can be found here: https://www.eval.org/affiliate.
Rad Resource # 3: Local Affiliate Collaborative.
As CEA Leadership, we join folks on the Local Affiliate Collaborative (LAC) Steering Committee monthly calls to share support, resources and expertise. The members and their respective AEA affiliates represent decades of evaluation and AEA leadership experience. Check out the website and resources. If you’d like to join the LAC, email Leah (LAC co-chair) at leah.neubauer@northwestern.edu.
The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Chicagoland Evaluation Association (CEA) Affiliate Week. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from CEA 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.