Years ago when I was studying engineering, if someone had told me that one day I would be evaluating  educational projects, I would have been puzzled. After all, I was studying engineering. I was going to get a job working in industry, and do whatever it is that engineers do. Evaluation?  I would have had no clue.

To this day, I have never formally studied evaluation. I am not a trained evaluator; I still consider myself an engineer. But, other than a few stints as a contractor, I have not worked as an engineer for quite some time. I am an educator. I taught engineering and technology for 17 years at community colleges.
 
I have recently served as an external evaluator on a few projects at community colleges. I am tasked with observing, gathering data, and reporting on the state of these projects. How have they progressed? How can they be improved?  Evaluation, at its best, should inform and advance the project. It should, in short, have an impact on the project. As the Program Evaluation Standards point out, “Evaluations should be planned, conducted, and reported in ways that encourage follow-through by stakeholders so that the likelihood that the evaluation will be used is increased.”  This is one of the things I have learned in the short time I have been serving as an evaluator. Do I still consider myself a novice?  You bet!  Am I interested in being a student of evaluation and learning more?  Most definitely.

Let me share a brief story that will help you understand.... One of my clients, an urban community college that has an NSF ATE grant focused on biotechnology, is conducting workshops for high school teachers. We wanted to determine the extent to which these teachers are incorporating biotechnology concepts and skills that they learned in the workshop into their classrooms. We therefore needed a survey instrument (a questionnaire) that we could send to the teachers to get their feedback. Rather than starting from scratch, I thought I would try to find some existing surveys and use them as guides in developing our instrument. I contacted a number of former colleagues and others that I thought might be able to help. I heard back from a colleague, an evaluation expert that has been working in the field for many years. He was able to provide me with a template that I was then able to use to develop our questionnaire.

I must admit that at the time I was searching for this guidance, I was not aware of Evaluate, the ATE evaluation resource center. I had done a few online searches, but kept coming up empty-handed. I was grateful to my colleague for giving me guidance, but I still do not know if the survey instrument I developed was as effective as it could have been. It would have been nice to have an evaluation community that could have helped me in my quest. 

So how do I view the world of evaluation? As a novice, what can I contribute to the evaluation community?  And what steps can I take to ensure that my knowledge, skills and abilities will improve to make me a more effective evaluator?

I am a recent addition to Evaluate. I am honored to serve and to be a part of this resource center based at Western Michigan University. There are people here at the Evaluation Center who have invaluable experience and expertise-- and I have already learned a great deal from them. Why did Evaluate hire me?  I believe they hired me for two reasons: I had community college teaching experience, and I had served as a program officer at the National Science Foundation and had extensive experience with the ATE program. I think one of the most important things I bring to the table is that I can understand the novice evaluators' perspective. I want to get better. And as I learn, I can help others learn who are in the same boat as I am. I am most fortunate to work with people who can guide me in my quest to be a more effective evaluator. I hope that I can pass on this guidance and share with others what I am learning. If you are interested in becoming a part of our Evaluation Community, we want to hear from you!  The beautiful thing about a community of practice is that we can all learn from each other. I invite you to help us in our quest to build and nurture such a community.