Project Evaluation Consultant

Personal Statement

During my time as a student at Brown, I have become the “go-to girl” for community programs thinking critically about their impact and how they can evaluate their program’s effect, due to my combined dedication to public service and my enthusiasm for program evaluation methodology. At Brown’s Swearer Center for Public Service, I have worked with staff and led trainings for student coordinators to guide them through strategic planning efforts by critiquing (and later operationalizing) their mission statements and developing plans for evaluation. As a Morris K. Udall Scholar and a finalist for the Harry S Truman Scholarship, I feel fortunate to have my commitment to environmental health and environmental justice considered as part of the continued legacy of two laudable public leaders.

I have had the opportunity to develop and apply my program evaluation toolkit academically, in my own community work, and as an advisor for other community-based programs. At Brown, I have learned impact evaluation and policy analysis tools in Introduction to Public Health, Introduction to Public Policy, and Evaluating the Impact of Social Programs. I have also developed independent coursework to consider the impact of campus-community partnerships in health and in education at Brown, and evaluating the effectiveness of a service-learning course in public health.

Although I have advised on strategic planning and evaluation for multiple public health and education programs outside of Brown, I am particularly proud of my work developing, teaching, coordinating, and evaluating an environmental justice and community service learning program for middle school students with Summerbridge San Francisco (a member of the Breakthrough Collaborative) and the Brown Superfund Basic Research Program Community Outreach Core for the past four years; I was recently recognized for this work as one of USA Today's top 60 college students (their All-Academic team). In 2007, I first conducted a formal program evaluation to assess how well I was teaching environmental justice and civic engagement. Evaluating my program allowed me to determine if my model was worth replicating elsewhere, and the consequences of my evaluation were quite satisfying. First, the data showed that my students were not only learning about environmental justice, but they were also able to apply the concepts they learned to think more broadly about social justice in their own environments. Second, the evaluation identified areas for improvement. I am currently developing strategies to connect environmental justice issues to other relevant subjects, like chemistry and history. My curriculum has the potential to make these subjects come alive. Third, and the source of my greatest pride, is that I am now focused on adapting this successful program. The program evaluation has helped legitimize this curriculum for people doing community outreach around environmental justice, and I received grant support to bring my curriculum to Rhode Island through the Community Outreach Core of the Superfund Basic Research Program. My reward comes from successfully adapting academic program evaluation theory to increase community awareness about environmental justice.