The institute is designed for teams who are really to collaborate to either jumpstart a new evaluation or strengthen existing practices. No prior evaluation experience is required. Whether your initiative is still in the planning stages or well underway, you’ll gain practical skills and tangible products leverage evaluation to advance your mission.

Each day includes engaging activities, hands-on work time, peer feedback, and one-on-one support from instructors You’ll apply key concepts directly to your own initiative as you develop foundational evaluation deliverables:

• Logic model or theory of change
• Evaluation questions and an evaluation use plan
• A data collection and analysis strategy
• A plan for making sense of evaluation findings and turning them into action
• A slide deck to present the plan to others in your organization
• An action plan for  the next steps for your evaluation

The institute instructors are senior staff  from the Western Michigan University Evaluation Center. We have deep experience as evaluation practitioners and educators and are ready to meet you wherever you are on your evaluation journey. 

Learn more about each of the instructors: Dr. Megan López, Dr. Kelly Robertson, Dr. Lori Wingate, and Dr. Brandon Youker. 

The Evaluation Center is widely recognized for its 60+ years of leadership in advancing evaluation theory, practice, and use. We are well known for our talent for translating evaluation concepts into practical strategies to support data-informed learning and decision making.

Learn more about The Evaluation Center and what guides our work by exploring our mission, vision, values, and beliefs about evaluation.