Enhancing Practical Evaluation Training Through Long-Term Evaluation Projects

There is common understanding and wide agreement for practical experiences in evaluation training programs. The argument for this idea is that practical training will provide students the real world experiences needed for preparation as professional evaluators and that these experiences are not possible in didactic course work. Several strategies for providing practical evaluation experiences can be found in the literature. They are limited by their short-term nature, typically bound by a semester time frame. This paper offers another possibility for providing practical evaluation training; namely, university-supported, long-term funded evaluation projects. These projects are managed through a university center that provides assistance to clients in student assessment and program evaluation. After a description of the center, the benefits and challenges of providing these experiences for students are discussed.