147 - Lessons Learned from Starting a University-Based Evaluation Center

Abstract Information: In response to the rapidly growing need for evaluation our university, we sought to establish an evaluation center within the College of Education specializing in educational evaluation. The evaluation center offers evaluation services, training, and scholarship opportunities in evaluation methods and methodologies that foreground the College of Education’s equity-centered mission in research, teaching, and service to the local community and beyond.

We acknowledge many well-established evaluation centers exist at other universities. Learning from the organizational structure and services provided by other evaluation centers was instrumental in helping to establish our center. The aim of this proposal is to provide insights learned in recently establishing an evaluation center at a large research one university in the southwest. After completing our first year, we have reflected on and documented the lessons learned. We hope our experiences inform other evaluators at universities considering a similar venture.

Lessons Learned
The university supported our center, but finding startup funding was challenging. We found widespread and unanimous recognition of the need for an evaluation center, offering us significant support for its launch. However, although our projects were well-funded, finding institutional funding for start-up costs, including the establishment of personnel, was a challenge. Furthermore, balancing the increasing number of projects with increasing our capacity to handle these projects also proved to be difficult.

Being a recognized center made our work easier. Having a website and upper administration advocates highlighting our services increased the number of requests for evaluation support from project leaders. The center also facilitated formal collaboration with people and programs throughout the university. Partners expressed contracting evaluation services through the center as opposed to an individual provided reassurance of more capacity to handle large scale evaluations, bringing prestige to our work.

Involvement of graduate students from diverse backgrounds benefitted the center. Most graduate students working with our center were recruited from a graduate level evaluation course and came with an interest in gaining experience in culturally responsive evaluation practices, particularly assisting with the projects focused on underrepresented minoritized (URM) students and providing directly applicable results. Projects sometimes offered graduate assistantships which are often scarce in education and provided students with paid research experiences, expanding their skills while having their financial needs addressed. Additionally, graduate students were encouraged and supported to prepare conference proposals and manuscripts for academic journals. Over the past year, eight students were lead authors on proposals accepted at national academic conferences.

The center benefitted from the graduate students. Graduate students assisted with all levels of evaluation tasks and brought a range of perspectives, which enriched our work. Each graduate student chose an article and led a discussion focused on an aspect of evaluation expanding our understanding and promoting more inclusive evaluation learning. They also mentored each other in areas such as data visualization and analysis.

Overall, establishing an evaluation center enhanced the educational evaluation capacity at our university by organizing faculty, staff, and students trained in culturally responsive educational evaluation methodologies to serve as evaluation experts for initiatives focused on URM students.