Governance

Consortium Council

The Consortium Council is the principal decision-making body and includes participants from member universities. Treasury Board Secretariat (Canada) and the Canadian Evaluation Society sit on the Council as ex officio members. The Council also serves (through the Secretariat) as a strategic information and planning body, making it possible for members to inform each other of plans and key decisions and take advantage of opportunities to shape and align the Consortium with emerging government and evaluation-related priorities.

Operations Committee

The Operations Committee is comprised of three to five members from among the university Consortium participants to facilitate the work of the Consortium, including operational decisions consistent with Consortium objectives, drafting policies for approval by the Consortium Council, and liaising with the Consortium members, including the Canadian Evaluation Society and the Government of Canada. The Operations Committee is accountable to the Consortium Council.

Secretariat

The Secretariat facilitates the day-to-day operations of the Consortium, including:

  • ongoing communication and liaising with Consortium participants
  • obtaining information from all participating institutions about the rules that pertain to admission, coursework, residency, and related issues
  • acquiring and maintaining an up-to-date working repository of documents (e.g., course syllabi, university regulations, admission procedures, residency requirements in “home” institutions) that is accessible to Consortium members
  • preparing drafts of reports for review and approval
  • identifying and disseminating best practices
  • organizing future meetings of the Consortium.

Work Plans

In its first year, the activities of the Council, Operations Committee and Secretariat included:

  • establishing institutional memberships and contact information for each institution
  • gathering information on evaluation education that currently exists in Canada
  • drafting, circulating, amending as needed an inventory of evaluation courses and programs in Consortium universities as well as other Canadian universities
  • Consortium members developing graduate certificate and diploma programs
  • sharing proposals for new program approvals
  • developing content for a website for CUEE
  • developing a policy for membership in CUEE.

Year Two Tasks (draft, subject to further discussion):

  1. Expand and revise the scope of the Cross-Canada Inventory of Evaluation Courses and Programs to include all universities in Canada.  
  2. Revise the inventory as needed for new members of the Consortium and make the inventory available to all members and other stakeholders.  
  3. Work with Consortium members to negotiate transfer credit arrangements for courses for their students. That will also mean getting agreement on “quality” of courses and delivery methods. We want students who are enrolled in any Consortium institution to be able to access courses that are pre-approved for credit in their home institution, subject to the rules in their own programs about numbers of courses to be transferred and their place in their home institution program.  
  4. Working with institutions to develop and get approvals for their own credentials. That will mean providing them with advice on their draft proposals, sharing existing proposals, and the like. Ideally, their proposals would reflect the fact their students have access to Consortium courses, and therefore, they do not have to develop a full suite of courses in house. A key need across Canada will be for access to more online graduate evaluation education opportunities. Growing online programs will make the Consortium work in ways that encourage further integration of programs later on.  
  5. Planning for a national meeting of all Consortium members in the Fall of 2010 to discuss progress, policies that are needed as the Consortium goes forward and facilitate agreements among member institutions/programs to recognize course transfers.  
  6. Continue to liaise with CES and TBS Canada around credentialing evaluators, developing relevant curricula and more accessible graduate education options for current and prospective evaluation professionals.

Year Three Tasks:

Year three tasks will be discussed at the Fall 2010 national meeting of CUEE members and stakeholders. Tentatively, in the third year, we will be working on elaborating and institutionalizing connections among Consortium members. One option is for students who are enrolled in a Consortium institution to be able to take a Certificate in Evaluation that is offered by the Consortium as a whole. Accomplishing this goal will mean negotiating flexible umbrella course transfer arrangements for Consortium members – the participating universities would all have to approve such an arrangement. Information about this option will be gathered and shared by October 2010.

Course Approval Process

Approving courses that will be available to the students of Consortium participants is premised on each institution having the final say over which Consortium courses are approved for their students.

We anticipate that within three years (by the time the development phase of this project is completed) the Consortium will have developed a process for reviewing courses that are offered by participating institutions. Initially, the Operations Committee will be responsible for developing draft criteria and procedures for this review process with a view to having them approved by a majority of the Council at a face-to-face meeting.

Participants in the Consortium are responsible for their own course development and program approval procedures. Successes can be shared via the Consortium but it will be up to faculty and staff in member units to navigate local approval processes. It is possible that the Consortium will offer ways for participating institutions to partner with each other to jointly offer graduate certificates and other credentials. There will also be a focus on courses offered online, which will make it possible for students to access them anywhere in Canada.

The Consortium will not try to harmonize fees or other costs of taking courses from participating institutions. Thus, students and practitioners who are taking courses from several universities should expect to pay the fees that apply to courses from a given university.

CUEE Policies

CUEE Evaluation and Performance Measurement

The Business Plan outlines accountability mechanisms through the CUEE governance structure and describes a vision against which our work can be assessed, including a draft logic model (Appendix B). One of the tasks for the Secretariat is to gather key information and data that will form a baseline for evaluating CUEE activities and progress.