It is now my ninth and last week of summer placement at the UW-Extension Natural Resources Institute (NRI) and I can finally say with pride that I am succeeding in my goal of developing logic models for each environmental program of the Institute’ land and water program area. I am also very close to completing the logic model for the Natural Resources Institute. But more than that, I finally put some faces to the programs.

Every time that my family and friends ask me what I am doing in my internship or what is my project about I very enthusiastically answer “I am doing logic models for environmental programs” which usually leads to “hhhmmm good…. and what is supposed to be a logic model?”. I try to explain it so they can share my enthusiasm, but they don’t so I just stopped trying. However, every time Samuel, my host supervisor, introduced me to other colleagues at the NRI and mentioned that I am developing logic models for the programs everyone looked so excited and interested in my work that has made me much more motivated and eager to achieve a great final product. For people outside NRI and the program development/evaluation arena, my project might sound boring, but for NRI staff my project is very important not only to help them evaluate their programs but to “tell their programs story”. I really like that, so now every time someone ask me what am I doing? I will respond “I am helping people to tell their programs story”.

As I mentioned in the first blog, the first month of internship was mostly solitary independent work. I spent a lot of time researching programs background, collecting and systematizing data, and drafting several versions of logic models. I did not have any contact with people involved in the programs, so I faced a little demotivation. I was told these models were going to be very useful, but I could not see it. I was also spending my last summer days in Madison inside a building, which made it worse (not to mention that my husband and I are separated by the Atlantic).

This second month has been completely different. We started by inviting program directors, coordinators and staff to work meetings to present the logic model drafts and ask them for feedback (did I include all the key activities, assumptions and intended outcomes? Is there something wrong? Did I capture their program value? etc.). Since there are eight branded programs in the land and water program area (if we separate the Regional Natural Resources Program in two, water and forestry), we were aiming to eight meetings. I was surprised to see how willing the programs directors were to meet (considering this time of the year is very busy for them), we did not have any problem coordinating seven work meetings in a range of two weeks. For Samuel, this showed how excited they were to meet me and work with me in the project. That was a good sign. Before the meetings with the program directors I had a meeting with the evaluation unit staff and interns to present my project and first drafts of logic models (picture below). This was the first time other people were going to review my work, so I was a little bit nervous. Luckily for me it was a supportive, safe and constructive environment. I received great feedback from great people, or better said…. ladies (yes, 90% of all evaluation unit staff are women).

I was now prepared to meet the directors. I sent them the first draft of their program’ logic model one day before the meetings so they could have time to review it (if they wanted to). All meetings were different, not only because the programs are very diverse, but the directors are also very different (in terms of background and personalities). The first one, with John Exo from the Regional Natural Resources Education Program, was more like a conversation. He asked me about my thoughts of the programs, the Institute and their reporting system. He shared his experience and ideas with me (he has been working in NRI for more than 20 years). It was a very interesting meeting, but we did not have time to dig in the logic model. He ended up reviewing the draft and sending me his comments and changes later that week. The second meeting was similar, but I did some specific questions about the content of the program. The next five meetings were much easier and more productive. Everyone reviewed the drafts before the meetings, so they were prepared to give me their comments and suggestions, ask me questions and use that time to improve their program logic model. All program directors mentioned how well I captured their programs intended outcomes and how useful it is for them to have logic models. They thought that even having these conversations were useful, so they were very grateful. This made me feel that the first difficult month was worth it.

I am now in the process of incorporating the feedback and meeting discussions into the last version of the logic models and preparing the integrated land and water program area logic model.

Project lesson… facilitation skills, a must!

Before this placement I was not sure if I would ever use the facilitation skills that the EC program taught us. I did not realize how important they were because I was always more focused in the scientific knowledge and technical skills we were learning. However, I now see how valuable and difficult it is to know how to successfully facilitate conversations/discussions. I think this is the most important lesson of this project. It is very easy to facilitate work discussions when everyone is in the same tune as you (understand what you are talking about), but this is not the case most of time. I can’t tell you how much I had to bite my tongue to not say “that is not an outcome, that is an output”, or “that is not an activity, it is an input”. On the other hand, I saw how easy it was for Samuel (he has years of experience in this role) to ask questions that lead to what we wanted them to tell us but without giving them the answers. I noticed how he changed the language according to the reaction of the program directors, for some of them he asked directly about “intended outcomes”, but for others he referred the same thing as “changes”. He also never corrected them (when they were mentioning outputs instead of outcomes) but he just continued asking them “yes, and if you do XXXX then….” or “ perfect, so if that happens it leads to…”. A smile and sense of humor was always present.

I am aware that these skills are half art half science, and a lot of the science part it is accompanied by experience, you just need to do it and continue improving until it becomes easier. I will continue working on both parts. If I want to continue working in program/policy evaluation, I need to improve my facilitation skills.

Personal lesson… adapt as needed

Even though the first month was tough, I now see it was the right approach and it was worth it. I still think in the perfect circumstances (with enough time and resources) we should start the process by meeting and interviewing program directors, coordinators, staff and partners, but since I had only two months to develop eight program logic models, this approach (creating drafts of logic models from secondary information first and then present them to programs staff for feedback) was more efficient and ended up working very good. Sometimes you need to adapt to the circumstances and context of the organizations you are working with. We are not always going to work under perfect or theoretical scenarios, so if we want to be successful in our task, we need to be flexible enough to adapt.