Hi!

I think it is important that y’all know something about me (Molly Engle) and my blog (Evaluation is an everyday activity).

 

First about me:

Currently, I’m the Evaluation Specialist for the Oregon State University (OSU) Extension Service and a Professor in Adult and Higher Education. I became a self-identified evaluator when I attended the first ever annual evaluation (Evaluation ’81) meeting in 1981 in Austin, Texas. (This was a combined meeting of the Evaluation Network and the Evaluation Research Society; the American Evaluation Association wouldn’t happen until 1986.)

 

Attending this first meeting with other graduate students was life changing. I knew then that this was where I was to be professionally. The American Evaluation Association is my professional home.

 

I built my family through adoption as a single parent.  My first daughter came home in 1994.  In 1998,  we moved to Corvallis, OR.  My second daughter came home in 2000. Working with the OSU faculty has provided (and continues to provide) me with challenges, variety, and adventures. My daughters are now 17 and a junior in high school  and almost 20 and a sophomore at college (how did that happen?) and they provide me with the evaluation challenge of balancing work, home, and family in a way that makes evaluation an everyday activity.

 

About my blog:

Although I’d hoped that this blog would be a place for conversation–ordinary, everyday conversation–you know, making comments and posing questions,  it seems to be more a forum of me telling what I think at a given moment.  It does serve as a place for sharing reactions, thoughts, ideas, and questions about program evaluation, the posts seems to be my reactions, thoughts, ideas, and questions.    (And although this blog is about program evaluation, it could also be about a product, a policy, personnel, a performance, or a process evaluation.  I tend to make any intervention a “program” and talk about evaluation from that view.)   My many years of experience in community-based program evaluation and wide body of literature (and there is a rich literature for program evaluation) will ground my posts.

 

You can contact me through the blog–comments are always welcome or at this address

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/employee/molly-engle

 

Glad you are joining me.  Look forward to hearing from you.   Welcome to my blog.