CANCELED ISSR Summer Methodology Workshops | Making Evaluation Work for Social Scientists | Kelly Giles & Elisa Martinez

Evaluation Principles Wordcloud
Monday, June 29, 2020 - 9:00am to 1:00pm
Tuesday, June 30, 2020 - 9:00am to 1:00pm
Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - 9:00am to 1:00pm
Online Event - Login credentials via email for registered participants

We regret that this workshop has been cancelled. We will look for opportunities to offer it in the future.


Description:

In this 3-day (12-hour) workshop, we explore the basics of program evaluation - a field of applied social research that is on the rise worldwide. Evaluators are being hired in growing numbers to answer questions about what works and why, in every field from nonprofits to labor unions, universities, corporations and government agencies. You may have been part of a program that was evaluated, and as a social scientist, you may have many evaluation skills in your toolkit. But what if you are not sure what evaluation is? Should you be doing it? And if so, how? Maybe even more importantly, why should you care about evaluation? 

If these are questions that you have pondered at some point, then attending this workshop can serve as a starting point for learning about evaluation from a methodological and practical standpoint. And for those in the social sciences who are looking to support positive social change, we will explore important political concerns in the evaluation field: What counts? How do we know? Who decides? To what ends?

Through hands-on exercises and real-world cases, participants will consider different approaches to evaluation, and experience the challenge of matching evaluation questions, methods, resources and principles in ways that respond to very different kinds of audiences. Our goal is for participants to recognize and enrich their own evaluative instincts and gain appreciation for how evaluation is shaping the world, as they learn the basics of how this practice works.

Instructors: Kelly Giles & Elisa Martínez
 

Kelly N. Giles is a researcher, instructor, and evaluator and doctoral student in sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research centers the intimate and sexual lives and experiences of Black women in their mid-30s to mid-50s, and analyzes how they redefine, reconstruct, and renegotiate their ideas about love, dating, marriage, sex, and intimacy. As an evaluator, Kelly has worked on NSF and Google-funded studies which support the diversification of STEM within higher education. She was also in the 2018-2019 cohort of the Graduate Education Diversity Internship (GEDI) program, through the American Evaluation Association (AEA) where she worked with community-based organizations, designed to address social justice initiatives within the Boston area. Kelly has a B.A. from Hunter College, CUNY and a B.B.A. from Western Michigan University.

Elisa Martínez is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at UMass Amherst, studying the politics of evaluation in the international relief and development sector. In her prior work, she worked on the integration of gender and diversity perspectives in international aid work, including impact measurement. Martínez has published on this work with co-authors Kent Glenzer and Michael Drinkwater in the Sage Handbook of Action Research (Bradbury, ed 2015) and with Victor Robinson and Theresa Hwang in Women's Empowerment and Global Health: a Twenty-first Century Agenda (Dworkin, Gandhi and Passano, eds 2017).  Her forthcoming paper with co-authors Laurel Smith-Doerr and Timothy Sacco in Research on the Sociology of Work explores evaluation in higher education STEM programming.

Questions? For more information about this or any of the ISSR Summer Methodology Workshops, please contact ISSR Director of Research Methods Programs Jessica Pearlman (jpearlman@issr.umass.edu).


Workshop Canceled, registration closed.

Please select the option for "12-Hour Workshop" when you register for this workshop. Because we have calibrated workshop fees based on # of hours, THOSE WISHING TO TAKE MORE THAN ONE WORKSHOP MUST REGISTER SEPARATELY FOR EACH ONE. DO NOT CHECK MULTIPLE WORKSHOPS WHEN YOU REGISTER FOR THIS ONE.

Five College Students and Faculty

  • Five College Undergraduate and Graduate Students:  $150/person
  • Five College Faculty & Staff:  $250/person

Non-Five College Students and Faculty

  • Non-Five College Undergraduate and Graduate Students:  $275/person
  • Non-Five College Faculty, Staff & Other Professionals:  $400/person

Registration note: The Five Colleges include: UMass Amherst, Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, and Smith College. Registration closes for each workshop 2 full business days prior to the start date. Please note: payment of registration does not guarantee a spot in these space-limited workshops. You will receive an email confirming the names of workshops for which your registration has been accepted. If a workshop you have registered for is over-subscribed, you will be refunded and offered placement on a wait-list.. If paying with departmental funds or personal checks, contact Karen Mason (mason@issr.umass.edu).

Cancellation note: In cases where enrollment is 5 or less, we reserve the right to cancel the workshop. In cases where the registrant cancels prior to the workshop, a full refund will be given with two weeks notice, and 50% refund will be given with one week notice. We will not be able to refund in cases where registrant does not notify us of cancellation at least one week prior to the beginning date of the workshop.