The American Evaluation Association provides funding for students to attend its annual meeting. This year the meeting will be in Orlando from November 11-14 and workshops will be held from Nov 9-11 and on Nov 15
Additional information about the student travel awards can be found at http://www.eval.org/eval2009/09students.htm. The information is also posted below.
There are many opportunities for students to get involved at Evaluation 2009!
Student Volunteer Opportunities: AEA welcomes full-time students interested in volunteering at Evaluation 2009. Student volunteers work a 4-hour shift and receive either a waived conference registration OR a discounted room at the headquarters hotel. Volunteer signups for Evaluation 2009 will go online on July 7 for members and August 7 for nonmembers and may be accessed from this page. Please do not inquire before July 7 about signing up as we strive to make the process as equitable as possible by opening up all spaces on the same schedule.
Student Travel Awards: Deadline Friday, April 17, 2009. AEA is pleased to offer an extensive travel award program thanks, in part, to the generosity of donations from professional development speaker’s fees and Career Center users. The Association offers two types of student travel awards, each with its own criteria and submission process.
Type I Awards: Up to ten $500 travel awards will awarded to full-time students to offset their conference attendance costs. The awards will be competitively chosen based on a short essay from the applicants focusing on the Presidential Strand theme of “Context and Evaluation.”
Details of the Type I Awards: This year’s program theme is “Context and Evaluation.” Context typically refers to the setting (time and place) and broader environment in which the focus of the evaluation (evaluand) is located. Context also can refer to the historical context of the problem or phenomenon that the program or policy targets as well as the policy and decision-making context enveloping the evaluation. Context can have multiple layers and is dynamic, changing over time.
This year’s travel award competition involves responding to an evaluation design question, using a recent article from the American Journal of Evaluation as background. The article, Horizontal Evaluation: Fostering Knowledge Sharing and Program Improvement Within a Network (AJE 2007, pp 493-508) describes a participatory evaluation of Papa Andina, a regional network that works to reduce rural poverty in the Andean region by fostering innovation in potato production and marketing. The evaluation is intended to help improve the network.
Essay Content: Suppose the funders are interested in learning the impact of Papa Andina on reducing poverty – what would be important context considerations in designing such a study? Highlight two or three of these considerations and how they would influence one or more features of your evaluation (e.g., the design, methods, staffing, overall approach, analyses, types of dissemination, etc.).
To apply for this award, students are expected to write an essay of no more than 2 pages in total length (12 point font, double-spaced) including any and all appendices, footnotes, references, etc., focusing on the content described above. The article may be accessed by clicking here.
This award provides an excellent opportunity for students to reflect on this year’s theme. In addition to being awarded $500 for travel, the content from the winning students’ essays will be incorporated into a panel during the conference.
The Application and Submission Process for Type I Awards:
1. Send an emailed cover letter to Heidi Nye in the AEA office at heidi@eval.org. As the subject line for your email, note “Submission for Type I Student Travel Awards”, and in the body of the email indicate the college or university at which you are enrolled full-time.
2. As an attachment to your email, send your essay as described above. Please send your essay as a word or rtf file and be sure that the total length of your essay does not exceed two pages. The total page count includes all aspects of your essay including any footnotes, appendices, or references. Send both the cover email and the essay, together, by midnight in the Eastern time zone in the United States on Friday, April 17, 2009.
Students selected to receive a Type I travel award will be notified on or before July 7, 2009.
Type II Awards: Deadline March 20, 2009. Up to six $500 travel awards are available to full-time students submitting conference proposals for papers identifying ways to increase the racial/ethnic diversity of people entering the field of evaluation and/or ways to increase the cultural competencies of evaluators more generally. All students may compete for these scholarships; however, special consideration will be given to students who themselves will increase the racial/ethnic diversity of presenters at the conference. Proposals that do not win will be reviewed as part of the general pool of proposal submissions.
The Application and Submission Process for Type II Awards:
1. Send an emailed cover letter to Heidi Nye in the AEA office at heidi@eval.org. In the subject line of your email, note “Submission for Type II Student Travel Awards” and in the body of your email indicate a) the college or university at which you are enrolled full-time, b) your racial or ethnic background, and c) the title of the proposal you intend to submit. Questions may be directed to Heidi Nye via email or via phone at 1-508-748-3326.
2. Submit the proposal itself by the March 20, 2009 deadline using the regular conference proposal submission guidelines and forms available online by clicking here. Select “Multiethnic Issues TIG” as the group to review your proposal. Only proposals that focus on the issues stated above will be considered.
Students selected to receive a Type II travel award will be notified on or before July 7, 2009.
