Student Competitions at CES 2017! by Case Competition Planning Committee

Here’s an update on our Student Case Competition and the Student SEEK Award!

In early Feburary 10 teams of students from universities and colleges across Canada participated in Round One of the 2017 CES-CESEF Case Competition, an annual even that helps students build evaluation skills using real-life cases. We would like to introduce the three finalist teams, and share their favourite part of the case competition! Join us in supporting these teams of students in the 2017 CES-CESEF Case Competition on Monday May 1 at 1:00pm!

From the Applied Social Psychology program at the University of Saskatchewan, we are Chrysalis Consulting. The team consists of Kelsey Brown, Karissa Wall, Sydney Cherniawsky, Evan Poncelet, Brandon Sparks (team members), coaches Karen Lawson, Linzi Williamson, Micheal Heimlick, and Alexander Crizzle. They are most looking forward to, “a hard-fought competition and celebrating the results with our fellow contestants and conference attendees”.

Transformative Growth Solutions (TGS) is composed of students Angela Randall, Dallas Genereaux, Felicia Phan, Laura Dale, and Selina Suleman. The team comes from UBC’s School of Population and Public Health, and is coached by Graham Shaw and Chris Lovato. TGS is most looking forward to “the final round as an opportunity to grow and find solutions as a team, while receiving transformative feedback from the experts in the broader evaluation community”.

Wavelength Consulting consists of graduate students from the School of Public Health & Health Systems at the University of Waterloo. Teammates Sarah Ayelan, Jasmin Bhawra, Nour Hammami, Stephanie Lu, and Sebastian Rios are coached by Dr. Anita Myers (Professor Emeritus) and Dr. Jennifer Yessis (Scientist at Propel Centre for Population Impact). The team’s favourite part of the case competition is “learning from, and having fun with, peers to propose an innovative evaluation solution under high pressure!”

In addition to the Case Competition, the Student Excellence advancing Evaluation Knowledge (SEEK) Award is another CES-CESEF initiative that is designed to foster student engagement in evaluation, and profile evaluation-related work conducted by students.

This year’s SEEK award winner is Linzi Williamson,  PhD Candidate in Applied Social Psychology with Dr. Karen Lawson at the University of Saskatchewan. Linzi will present her paper titled, “Evaluating the PotashCorp Kamskenow Science Outreach Program: An Appreciative Inquiry Approach” during a paper session on Tuesday, May 2nd, 10:30-12:00.  She entered the competition to highlight this program, “which strives to provide high-quality, inquiry-based, hands-on science and mathematics activities to community schools with the long-term aim of increasing the participation of Aboriginal and other vulnerable youth in the sciences.”