There are many opportunities for students to get involved at Evaluation 2008!
STUDENT VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES: AEA welcomes full-time students interested in volunteering at Evaluation 2008. Student volunteers work a 4-hour shift and receive either a waived conference registration OR a discounted room at the headquarters hotel. Please check back on or around July 3rd to learn more about volunteering and to sign up. Please note that we cannot sign you up to volunteer before July 3.
STUDENT TRAVEL AWARDS:
Deadline Friday, April 18, 2008. 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 awards 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 "Evaluation Policy and Evaluation Practice".
Details of the Type I Awards: The theme of Evaluation 2008 is Evaluation Policy and Evaluation Practice. An evaluation policy is any rule or principle that a group or organization uses to guide its decisions and actions when doing evaluation. Every group and organization that engages in evaluation - including government agencies, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations - has evaluation policies. Sometimes these are formal, explicit and written; at other times they are more implicit and ad hoc principles or norms that have simply evolved over time. To apply for this award, students are expected to write an essay of 500 words or fewer describing a challenge in evaluation practice, such as engaging stakeholders or implementing rigorous designs, and discussing how evaluation policy might be used to address the challenge.
To apply for this award, students are expected to write an essay of 500 words or fewer describing a challenge in evaluation practice, such as engaging stakeholders or implementing rigorous designs, and discussing how evaluation policy might be used to address the challenge. (Essays longer than 500 words will be eliminated from the competition).
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:
-
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.
-
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 words in your essay do not exceed 500. The total word 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 18, 2008.
Students selected to receive a Type I travel award will be notified by July 3, 2008.
TYPE II AWARDS: Deadline March 14, 2008. Up to four $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. Winning proposals will be presented during a special session sponsored by the Multiethnic Issues TIG. 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:
-
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.
-
Submit the proposal itself by the March 14, 2008 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 by July 3, 2008.