UD master’s and certificate programs fill a growing need for program and policy evaluation professionals

Evaluations of social policy help ensure programs are fiscally responsible, said Sue Giancola, senior associate director of UD’s Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP) and director of the interdisciplinary evaluation science program.

Evaluation science grads are in demand

Article by Eric Ruth Photo illustration by Cindy Dolan November 22, 2023

UD master’s and certificate programs fill a growing need for program and policy evaluation professionals

Lauren Camphausen knew exactly what she wanted, but she wondered how to make it real.

She wanted to help people, to be a force for good in the world. She wanted to earn her graduate degree and find the career potential it would unlock. She worried, though, that it all would be too tough to achieve as a working parent — until she saw the new master’s program at the University of Delaware.

It seemed perfectly suited to her time-pressed life: a master’s degree in interdisciplinary evaluation science, launched earlier this year to help fill the growing need for solid, science-based assessments of social policies in schools, governments and healthcare. She could take the UD program online, dive into the courses laced with cross-department expertise, and finish in a year or two.

By 2025, she aims to have her new diploma in hand.

“It was absolutely the perfect match for what I was working on professionally,” said Camphausen, a program manager for UD’s master’s program in epidemiology who has spent much of her career examining social policy outcomes. “They really have done a lot with the design of it for working professionals like myself. So it was an easy degree to take on while I was working full time.”

It is also a degree that is clearly helpful in a society with many so-called solutions, but no easy answers. The field of evaluation science evolved to bridge the potential disconnect between politics and policy — to give scientists a way to measure impact and assess success and to bring a critical-but-neutral perspective to what are often emotionally and politically driven issues.

That need has only grown as the planet’s challenges become increasingly complex — and divisive. Evaluation science not only has the power to objectively measure policy outcomes and gauge success, it has been designed so that stakeholders can use the appraisals to modify and improve the programs earlier in the process. In addition to a master’s degree, students can earn a four-course graduate certificate in program evaluation or applied research methods, and apply all 12 credits from either certificate to the 30-credit master’s if they choose to continue their studies in the program.

“Most federal programs require that there be an evaluation, and really all programs, regardless of funding source, could benefit from evaluation and decision-making based upon data,” said Sue Giancola, senior associate director of UD’s Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP) and director of the interdisciplinary evaluation science program.

“Evaluation is fiscally responsible,” she added. “If you know early on in a program’s implementation that it is not working and adapt accordingly, you’re going to save money; if you can make early adjustments to a program based upon data, a purposeful and informed allocation of resources will facilitate continuous improvement.”

After getting its start as a way to assess educational and social programs in the 1960s and 1970s, evaluation science is now embraced by many other fields, Giancola said.

“Now, there’s a growing need for evaluation in the health fields, the agricultural fields and the engineering fields,” she said. “Through CRESP, we’ve also done some work with business and entrepreneurship, with diversity and inclusion programs, with faculty training initiatives. In just about any field now, there are programs that can benefit from evaluation.”

Program participant Amber Wool said she has already implemented some of the skills she learned at UD in her work for Episcopal Community Services in Philadelphia.

Amber Wool, a 32-year-old data reporting specialist, was looking for ways to keep her skills current in the rapidly evolving field, but had found few programs that suited her needs while working full time from home in South Jersey. Her search ended when she read about UD’s certificate programs and met Giancola via Zoom, discovering that the program evaluation certificate was just what she’d hoped to find.

“Professor Giancola was very encouraging and asked a lot about my career and the work that I was doing. She said I was the perfect candidate,” said Wool, who is now halfway through the certificate and has enjoyed a strong sense of support without having to travel to Delaware. "The folks at UD have been really approachable. We have weekly office hours over Zoom, and they record the lectures in case you aren’t able to make it. It is very easy to be engaged and get the support I need.”

Now, Wool is considering whether she might also be able to take on the interdisciplinary evaluation science master’s degree.

“Dr. G has been encouraging, helping me figure out whether I want to continue in the master’s, and what that would look like,” Wool said. In the meantime, she has already implemented some of the skills in her work for Episcopal Community Services in Philadelphia.

"There aren’t really all that many options out there [for professional development courses that are convenient and cutting-edge],” she said. “So when I learned about this program, I was really excited.”

Graduates of UD’s interdisciplinary evaluation science program could find themselves working in government, at research firms, in schools or even healthcare providers. Housed within the Graduate College, UD’s program lets students choose their own area of focus from nine areas of concentration developed in partnerships with six UD colleges. The concentrations range from methodologically focused coursework, including applied statistics, business analytics and bioinformatics data science, to content-focused coursework, including early childhood policy, educational technology, education policy, health policy, higher education policy and public policy.

“It was absolutely the perfect match for what I was working on professionally,” said Lauren Camphausen, a program manager for UD’s master’s program in epidemiology who has spent much of her career examining social policy outcomes.

“Evaluation science lets us not just rely on what we like or what we think is good; it lets us examine what’s working,” Camphausen said. “It’s a field that can be plugged in almost anywhere.”

Those broad options are made possible through the interdisciplinary approach of the program. While core courses with interdisciplinary content are offered through UD’s College of Education and Human Development, the program also benefits from campuswide academic expertise.

“We have partnerships with nearly every college in the University,” Giancola said. “I was delighted by how willing the colleges were to work with us.”

Once they graduate, students will be entering a field full of promise. A 2021 market research study by UD’s Division of Professional and Continuing Studies found high demand in the mid-Atlantic region, with a median salary for graduates with evaluation science master’s degrees of $80,893. Total U.S. employment is expected to grow by 8.3 million jobs from 2021-31, with nearly a third of the new jobs in healthcare and social assistance.

“It has really been a remarkable rise in terms of the numbers of people and organizations doing this work,” said Gary T. Henry, dean of UD’s College of Education and Human Development and a highly regarded expert in evaluation science. The rise of big data and computing power has only accelerated the field’s potential. “That has really transformed what we are able to do, and how we are able to do it.”

After more than 50 years of evolution, the field seems particularly well suited to today’s challenges, from social to educational, agricultural to healthcare. Sharp-eyed assessments are especially welcome at a time when divisive rhetoric makes it harder to find compromise and make progress, Henry said.

“We’ve never needed evaluation science more than we do right now,” Henry said.

For more information on UD’s interdisciplinary evaluation science master’s degree program, visit udel.edu/grad/eval.