The fiercest advocates for change are often program managers, policymakers, community members, and evaluators who themselves come from the minoritized communities they serve. As evaluators of African descent, we ask, “If not us, then who?” and are compelled to understand how our identities impact our perceived role and evaluation praxis. A survey conducted among evaluators of color who are diverse in age, gender, sector of employment, nation of origin, and years of experience revealed that an evaluator's identity influences their role and evaluation praxis. We argue all evaluators, commissioners of evaluation, and evaluation stakeholders must critically understand how their backgrounds influence the work they do, given that this impacts their engagement and responsiveness to the varying contexts and cultures encountered. We encourage readers to be reflective about how our identity impacts our role, and more importantly, ways we can work to intentionally incite change when working with historically marginalized populations.

Black males are severely underrepresented in undergraduate and graduate engineering programs. While postsecondary interventions have shown to be effective, they are few and far between. Representation of Black males in all segments of the engineering pipeline continues to lag. There also remains a dearth of research that has sought to uncover and understand the factors that influence Black males to pursue engineering graduate degrees and further use these perspectives for more informed intervention design. As a part of a larger study, the authors used interpretive phenomenological analysis to understand the factors that influenced 15 Black male engineers to pursue engineering graduate degrees and to elucidate factors that led to their degree attainment. As the data was analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis, the authors were guided by cultural capital theory to uncover the assets possessed by participants to attain an advanced degree. Three major themes emerged from this study: benefits of advanced degrees (motivation for why they pursued advanced degrees), social supports (motivation for attainment), and hurdles and obstacles experienced (possible barriers to attainment). Two minor themes (advisor and mentor challenges and negative racial experiences) emerged from the major theme of hurdles and obstacles experienced. Finally, the authors provide recommendations for improving the educational pipeline to in- Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and EngineeringHenderson et al. 2crease the number of Black males attaining advanced degrees in engineering. The findings of this study may impact intervention design and efforts aimed at recruiting and retaining Black males in engineering graduate programs.

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The terms cultural responsiveness and cultural competence have become ubiquitous in many fields of social inquiry, including in evaluation. The discourse surrounding these issues in evaluation has also increased markedly in recent years, and the terms can now be found in many RFPs and government-based evaluation descriptions. We have found that novice evaluators are able to engage culturally re-sponsive approaches to evaluation at the conceptual level, but are unable to translate theoretical constructs into practice. In this article we share a framework for teaching culturally responsive approaches to evaluation. The framework includes two do-mains: conceptual and methodological, each with two interconnected dimensions. The dimensions of the conceptual domain include locating self and social inquiry as a cultural product. The dimensions of the methodological domain include formal and informal applications in evaluation practice. Each of the dimensions are linked to multiple domains within the Competencies for Canadian Evaluation practice. We discuss each and provide suggestions for activities that align with each of the dimensions.Les termes sensibilité culturelle et compétence culturelle sont mainten-ant omniprésents dans de nombreux domaines d’enquête sociale, notamment en évaluation. Le discours entourant ces questions en évaluation s’est aussi intensifié de façon marquée au cours des dernières années et ces termes sont maintenant présents dans de nombreuses demandes de proposition et descriptions d’évaluation émanant d’organismes gouvernementaux. Nous avons trouvé que les évaluateurs débutants sont en mesure de concevoir des approches d’évaluation culturellement adaptées, mais sont incapables de transférer ces notions théoriques à la pratique. Dans le présent article, nous décrivons un cadre pour l’enseignement d’approches évaluatives qui soient culturellement sensibles. Le cadre inclut deux sphères – conceptuelle et méthodologique – chacune ayant deux dimensions interconnectées. Les dimensions de la sphère conceptuelle implique de positionner l’évaluateur et le processus de recherche comme un produit culturel. Les dimensions de la sphère mé-thodologique comprennent des applications formelles et informelles pour la  pratique

To explore the relationship between theory and practice in evaluation, we focus on the perspectives and experiences of student evaluators, as they move from the classroom to an engagement with the social, political, and cultural dynamics of evaluation in the field. Through reflective journals, postcourse interviews, and facilitated group discussions, we involve students in critical thinking around the relationship between evaluation theory and practice, which for many was unexpectedly tumultuous and contextually dynamic and complex. In our exploration, we are guided by the following questions: How do novice practitioners navigate between the world of the classroom and the world of practice? What informs their evaluation practice? More specifically, how can we understand the relationship between theory and practice in evaluation? A thematic analysis leads to three interconnected themes. We conclude with implications for thinking about the relationship between theory and practice in evaluation.