Sarah Baughman, eXtension Evaluation and Research Leader, has been awarded the Sustained Excellence in Extension Evaluation Award for 2013 by the American Evaluation Association’s Extension Education Evaluation Topic Interest Group. The award is given for conceptual, methodological and evaluation accomplishments making outstanding contributions to Extension and evaluation.
Sarah began her evaluation career in 2007 working as the 4-H camping specialist with a focus on evaluation with Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE). In this role she led statewide efforts to evaluate camping programs at the six Virginia 4-H Centers with a focus on camper life skill development. In early 2011, she became the Evaluation Specialist for the eXtension Military Families Initiative. In this position, she flourished in investigating and developing innovative conceptual and methodological evaluation ideas and approaches to working with audiences in a new digital environment. Her work in measuring and evaluating social media efforts and emerging technologies as well as collaborating with innovative communities of practice has helped eXtension as well as CES staff working with social media and digital technologies document, report, and shift digital programming efforts. Her focus has been on not only helping people find the right tools and programs to measure their efforts but also to use the results to continue to improve programs.
In September 2012 she became the eXtension Initiative’s Evaluation and Research Leader. In this role, she has provided overall evaluation leadership and assistance to 72 eXtension Communities of Practice (CoP) and has also taken the digital evaluation ideas and approaches she developed for Military Families to all eXtension CoPs. She has been invited to present on social media measurement for several states and the Department of Defense. She has 10 published articles and over 30 presentations on evaluation.
In a relatively short time, Sarah has made outstanding contributions to Extension and evaluation. She is a rising star who is most deserving of this award!