My name is Troy M. Williams, I am a third-year doctoral student in the school of Human Ecology. I entered graduate school very interested in learning about program evaluation. I enrolled in multiple methods and evaluation courses, attended conferences and workshops on program evaluation, and continuously sought out the advice of seasoned professionals on campus. After one of those meetings, I was told about the evaluation clinic. The network, resources, and training that the clinic host has been one of the most impactful to my professional development. At the end of my first year of graduate school, I was hired by the Population Health Institute as an evaluator; later that month, I was recruited by the ¡Milwaukee Evaluation!, Inc. Board to assist them with interpreting data from surveys that they collected about how evaluators throughout the state are using Culturally Responsive Evaluation. After completing our analysis, the evaluation clinic was one of our first stops to think through how we can share our findings with professionals throughout the state. Annalee suggests that we use their weekly meeting time to host a data party. In this data party, we shared our analysis from the CRE survey with participants and asked them to identify other recommendations for evaluators to use CRE. We ended the data party with so much more context to our survey responses. The evaluation clinic’s enthusiasm to meet with us as we were planning this process and willingness to sacrifice their weekly meeting times for us to facilitate our data party was essential to the completion of this report. It truly speaks to the impact that small but powerful organizations can have on evaluation practices throughout the state. This clinic has been such a resource to myself and others. We are lucky to have it on our campus.
