Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Our names are Erin Lebow-Skelley (Emory University), Diana Rohlman and Taylor Vogel (Oregon State University), and Lisa Hayward (University of Washington). We are evaluators, scientists, and community engagement professionals that work for NIEHS-funded environmental health science research centers. Working across 26 Centers, we formed a working group to coordinate evaluation efforts across our diverse nationwide research centers. Our centers focus on different environmental health topics and utilize different approaches to foster community-university partnerships, yet there are shared goals that unite us. It is from this base that we are learning from each other to improve our work and show our impact.
We first began working together in 2022. Since then we have identified several lessons and resources for evaluating environmental health programs and community-engaged research.
National networks are a common mechanism used to implement programming broadly. Evaluators are challenged with evaluating the activities of the different centers within these networks, which often have shared goals yet diverse settings and contexts. Standard multi-site evaluations are often inappropriate when amplifying and empowering diverse and underrepresented voices in evaluation, and so new complex evaluation approaches are needed.
Collaborating across Centers through an Evaluation Working Group provides an example of how young and more experienced evaluators can learn from each other while also incorporating the diverse perspectives of their local communities into their activities and evaluation practice. The Working Group builds capacity for evaluation, providing a supportive network and opportunities for co-learning and career development for people at all levels of evaluation experience while also incorporating the diverse perspectives of our local communities into our activities and evaluation practice.
NIEHS developed an evaluation metrics manual for all of their grantees and community partners that includes examples of metrics for the cross-cutting themes that we, as their grantees, all share, such as partnerships and capacity building.
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.