5: Are the Graduate Evaluation Course Curricula at Land-Grant Universities Adequately Preparing Their Graduates for Successful Evaluation Careers?

This abstract presents the experiences of six Asian origin PhD students in Extension Education at different landgrant universities as they pursue course and research work with a goal of securing evaluation jobs after graduation. We have some experience in developing agricultural programs. However, our exposure to evaluation has been mainly through coursework and graduate assistantship work. We found that there is limited emphasis on diverse evaluation approaches in extension education graduate curricula. Further, the extension program evaluations we have been part of so far mainly focused on reporting output numbers and short-term outcomes, not long-term impact and evaluation findings for program improvement. We believe adding content on evaluation theories and diverse frameworks to the existing curricula can strengthen the competencies of graduate students. Through this Birds of a Feather session, we aim to engage participants in reflecting on the current extension education curricula and identify additional learning opportunities for students.