11:30 - 12:30  CRE Snapshots and Insights: A First Look at Lessons Learned from CRE Evaluations- Steven Kraus

The following PowerPoint Presentation is a synthesis of lessons learned from JESNA's analysis of 18 evaluations of Continuing Rabbinic Education Programs

CRE Snapshots and Insights (386 kB)

Additional Thoughts about Evaluation from CRE Program Providers:

A) Rabbi Natan Margalit (Hebrew College)

• We found evaluation to be essential for fine-tuning.
• The applications to CRE programs gather significant important information about rabbis and their CRE needs.  We should conduct a research analysis of them.
• We also discovered that the recruiting process (emails and phone calls) is a source of info/data
• We learned much about retreats through an  ethnographic model of conversations with participants (these results were never collected on an evaluation survey)

B) Rabbi Levi Mostofsky (Yeshiva University)

CRE evaluation over the past few years at Yeshiva University's Center for the Jewish Future

• The key for us in this process
  • Initially, was the encouragement of our funders
  • While that was the impetus to evaluate more rigorously, the entire culture in our offices began to evolve
  • We began working closely with an in-house professional, Dr. Ariel Fishman, Yeshiva University's Director of Institutional Research at Yeshiva University
  • We also benefited greatly and learned from working with outside evaluators including Jesna's Berman Center

• In employing rigorous evaluation, we have had to:
  • resist the allure of simply trusting our own visceral reactions and anecdotal feedback, especially complimentary
  • allow ourselves to be vulnerable and open to criticism
  • develop a confidence in evaluation mechanisms to offer useful feedback
  • appreciate the value of investing time and resources in evaluation

• Over the past few years, rigorous, analytical program-evaluation has become part of the culture in our work, and the benefits of this culture shift have been wide:
  • it has improved our relationship with funders and our ability to work more closely with them
  • our programs are more efficient & cost effective in form, and more targeted in design and long term impact goals
  • we are tailoring differentiated CRE experiences for different groups of rabbis with different needs and interests

• • For our program participants
    • we have found greater buy in on their part for our programs
    • they feel heard, and partners in the process of our service to them
    • we also find ourselves openly modeling values that our programming challenges rabbis themselves to embrace; self reflection and being open to criticism and continued growth

• • for us, all of our work has been effected on every level, with a greater clarity of purpose
    • Evaluation design and logic models demand
      • a clear sense of why we program, and the broad impact we aspire to
      • forethought in articulating goals of every aspect of programs
      • responsibility to respond to feedback and respect that data to guide us
    • we are more conscientious that programs do not exist for their own sake, but to advance goals , and no program is sacred in being beyond critical analysis
    • the programs we provide are best inspired by the honest needs and interests of our participants, and most effective when guided by their input
    • resources are finite, and the more efficiently and thoughtfully we allocate them, the greater impact we can have

• Evaluation can be humbling, but we are finding the culture shift to ultimately be empowering, and our work more directed and satisfying.

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