Date: Monday, February 9, 2026
Greetings! We are the faculty mentors of the DC Emerging Evaluators Exchange conference (DCE3; formerly the DC Consortium Student Conference on Evaluation and Policy). Although our faculty mentor group has grown over the years, founding members included Drs. Valerie Caracelli (U.S. Government Accountability Office), Rodney Hopson (American University, then George Mason University), Kathy Newcomer (George Washington University), and Veronica Thomas (Howard University). Now, we also include Drs. Esther Nolton (Everstead Strategies), Beverly Peters (American University), and Divya Varier (George Mason University) who also provide mentorship and coordination. Together, we advise the DCE3 Organizing Committee of graduate students who attend American University, George Mason University, George Washington University, Howard University, and other universities in the DC region, to plan and host an annual conference.
Borrowing from the Edward F. Kelly Evaluation Conference, a graduate student-led conference established in 1987 serving the central Canada and upstate New York region, we recognized the importance and need for a similar conference in the DC region. We gladly support this initiative because DCE3 affords emerging evaluators a critical learning experience in the design and conduct of a project related to the practice or study of evaluation. They also get the opportunity to submit a conference proposal, present to peers and professionals, and engage with a professional audience about their work.
For fellow faculty mentors who may be interested in and in the position to establish and support student-led conferences, here are some tips from our experience on how best to do that.
Seek Existing Resources. There are many publicly-available resources on how to organize and execute regional student conferences (e.g., SHRM; Kumar Shanmugam et al, 2013; APPAM). If you are hosting a regional student conference, or considering it, please feel free to reach out! We would love to be a resource and exchange ideas.
Embed Participation in Coursework. Since inception, presenting at the conference has been embedded into the doctoral-level program evaluation course at Mason. For the remainder of this week, you will see samples of the work from some of our student presenters during the 2025 conference.
Build Local Community Partnerships. Over the years, we have taken different approaches to fund the conference. If you are similarly planning a local student conference, here are some ideas about potential sponsors and resources to consider:
Ultimately, the measure of our success and impact as mentors is fully shown in the joy and work of our students. Each year, all our Organizing Committee student members and student presenters provide us with great promise for the future of evaluation!
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Interested in seeing more work like this? Join us live for the 2026 DC Emerging Evaluators Exchange conference on Friday, April 24th! Students, new evaluators, or seasoned professionals are all invited to register for this virtual conference or in-person networking event.
If you are a graduate student or recent alumni of a university within the DC region, you are also eligible to submit a proposal to present. See the Call for Proposals for full details.
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