Teaching at the Intersection of Community Engagement and Program Evaluation

The preservice education of public health professionals often includes thorough, community-engaged learning experiences. One critical element of public health work is program evaluation - an essential function for supporting evidence-based practice. However, the literature on how to prepare future public health professionals to integrate community-engaged evaluation work is lean, although lessons may be learned from the literature on service-learning. Analyzing students' reflections in their "key learning experience" essays from an introductory program evaluation course incorporating service-learning may address this gap, helping educators identify the most effective elements of their course design and implementation. This illustrative evaluation used existing educational frameworks grounded in andragogic principles and significant learning experiences to deductively analyze 146 graduate students' reflections on their service-learning course experience. Deductive analysis suggested that community engagement is a key element of students' learning experience. Sixty-two (42.5%) student reflections were about community engagement, whereas 84 (57.5%) were about other topics the students found memorable. A program evaluation course that integrates service-learning may be a viable vehicle for teaching public health students about community engagement.