RTP Evaluators

PLEASE NOTE DATE CHANGE: Save the Date – Hallie Preskill is coming to RTPE on June 14!!

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RTPE is thrilled to announce that our June May workshop will focus on strategies that can be used to facilitate intentional group learning, and led by Hallie Preskill. In this hands-on session we will experience and learn how to use strategies such as data placemats, chalk talks, and gradients of agreement from FSG‘s new guide. In recent years, RTPE has focused on evaluation capacity building, stakeholder engagement, and data visualization. This session will be designed to build on these topics by providing hands-on training with activities you can use with your clients and colleagues.

As most of you probably know, Hallie is a former President of AEA. She has published multiple books on evaluation, and is one of the field’s leading contributors on evaluation capacity building and appreciative inquiry. Hallie is currently a managing director with FSG, where she oversees the firm’s Strategic Learning and Evaluation practice efforts. What some of you may not know is that Hallie moved to the RTP area within the last year, and she just joined RTPE! Whether you have the chance to meet her at the workshop in June May, or some other time soon, we hope you will help welcome Hallie to North Carolina!

This year’s session will be on June 14 May 24 at Duke’s Bullpen entrepreneurial space in Durham. The workshop will run from 9am-2pm (lunch will be provided). Seating is limited to 45 attendees. As always, members will have priority seating. Registration will open March 1, and so please mark your calendars and stay tuned!

Hope to see you all at this month’s meeting.

RTPE Meeting Friday, November 18, Presentation by Dr. Phillip W. Graham, RTI on Engaging Community Stakeholders in Large-scale, Rigorous Program Evaluations

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The Research Triangle Park Evaluators’ (RTPE) next meeting will be held on Friday, November 18, 2016 at The Frontier (800 Park Offices Drive, Durham, NC 27703, http://www.rtp.org/about-us/the-frontier/about-us/) beginning at 11 am.

We will be a large group this month, as we will have 20 students joining us from Greg Cizek’s Program Evaluation class at UNC. We will meet in the classroom this month to make sure that we have room for all attendees.

Meeting Agenda:
11:00am – 11:10am Announcements and Introduction
11:10am – 12:00pm Presentation (with 15-minutes reserved for a Q&A)
12:00pm – 1:00pm Optional networking lunch (Dr. Graham will join us until 12:30 PM; light refreshments provided; we invite you to participants to bring their lunch or purchase from the Food Truck Rodeo)

About the presentation: Dr. Philip Graham will join us to share success and challenges that come with engaging community stakeholders in large-scale, rigorous program evaluations. He will use examples from a national cross-site evaluation for the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s Partnerships for Success (PFS) program funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSA). PFS addresses underage drinking, prescription drug misuse, and other substance abuse prevention across 600 communities in 47 states, eight territories/jurisdictions, 13 tribal organizations, and the District of Columbia. Dr. Graham will highlight how Qualitative Cross-site Analysis (QCA) is applied to identify promising patterns in service delivery and how he uses a variety of dissemination strategies through the evaluation cycle to promote stakeholder engagement and evaluation use.

About the Presenter: Phillip W. Graham is Director of RTI’s Drugs, Violence, and Delinquency Prevention Research Program within the Center for Justice, Safety, and Resilience. He has more than 20 years of experience conducting community-based research and evaluation, with researching focusing on evaluating preventive interventions developed to reduce and prevent adolescent interpersonal violence and substance use. Dr. Graham currently serves as the project director on several national cross-site evaluations assessing community efforts to reduce underage drinking, prescription drug misuse and abuse, marijuana use, and opioid deaths. His methodological focus includes the use of mixed-methods approaches, and his research emphasizes the importance of culture, community context, systems change, and place-based strategies.