Have you ever wondered how to get support for writing the evaluation section of your grant proposal or conducting the evaluation when your proposal is funded?
Since November of 2018, Beronda Montgomery from the Academic Advancement Network and Miles McNall from University Outreach and Engagement have co-facilitated regular meetings of the MSU Evaluators’ Network (MSUEN) to discuss strategies for creating an internal network of faculty, staff, and students with evaluation expertise to provide pre- and post-award support to faculty on the evaluation components of their research grants.
On September 25, 2019, with support from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, MSUEN held an Interdisciplinary Evaluation Mixer, The Research-Evaluation Interface: How do research and evaluation strengthen each other? The purpose of the mixer was to bring together for the first time all members of the MSU community with expertise or interest in evaluation to identify strategies for creating a university-wide structure that links evaluation resources and expertise to evaluation needs on campus. A panel of speakers that included Miles McNall, DeAndra Beck, Andrea Allen, Karin Pfeiffer, and Jane Payumo, addressed the question of how research and evaluation strengthen each other. Panel presentations were followed by facilitated discussions that addressed the following three questions:
- What are the evaluation needs at MSU?
- What evaluation resources already exist at MSU?
- How can we connect these resources so that they are more readily available when and where they are needed?
MSUEN will continue to meet to review the input from the mixer and explore opportunities for linking internal evaluation expertise with needs. If you are interested in joining MSUEN, please contact Miles McNall (mcnall@msu.edu; 432-0475).