Dear Professor,

Reflecting back to the beginning of the semester, I felt very overwhelmed during the first online meeting with the professor. I had no idea what a program evaluation was nor did I expect to have to complete my own evaluation of a program of my own. After taking it one task at a time, I was able to successfully complete all the assignments and earned pretty good grades. I was accepted to volunteer at the Samaritan House, (http://samaritanhouseva.org/about-us/#support-programs) for my field observation class that I am also taking this semester. This was a great opportunity to complete my evaluation because they have so many programs within the agency. I ended up completing my evaluation of the Children’s Program at Samaritan House.

My learning was demonstrated as I completed each step of the evaluation as I learned them. The reason an evaluation is completed is to learn if the needs of the stakeholders are being met and determine if there are any area for improvements. After learning about stakeholders and who they were, I learned how important stakeholders are with doing a program evaluation. Stakeholders such as the staff and program participants can make a evaluation difficult if they are not on board or open to having one completed. Luckily, the stakeholders for me at the Samaritan House which were the staff were eager to work with me and help me complete my program evaluation on their program.

The areas I feel I was most successful in over the course and during the evaluation, was during task 6 and 8. I developed a survey and conducted interviews to gather information to develop my findings. I found this quite easy to do because in every human service class that I have taken thus far has taught me that asking open-ended questions will give more information.

I see the content of this course intersecting with my future career, as it has equipped me to be able to develop and conduct an evaluation of any program that I may work in the future. I will be able to work with other members of the organization to conduct our own in-house evaluation to see if the services we are providing are meeting the needs of the stakeholders in the program.

At this present time, I have not been able to apply what I have learned in this course to my current job, but I may use this information learned in the near future. I plan to pursue a career in substance abuse counseling in the future and I am positive that I will use some portion of the information learned in this course. I will have to conduct in-house evaluations with my team and staff to learn new ways that we can improve the services provided to individuals who struggle with substance abuse.

Overall, this was a great learning experience and now that we are coming to the end of the semester, I feel 100% better and more confident in myself with what I learned from this course and would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn and excel in program evaluation.

Sincerely,

Austrailya Vick

*maximum amount of points earned on first attempt so this is the first and final draft.