At EvaluATE’s first-ever National Visiting Committee in 2009, Dr. Nick Smith (NVC chair) recommended that we develop a “project vita” as a convenient way to update the NVC on our center’s activities. He pointed us to a paper he coauthored in which he described the process, uses, and benefits of developing and maintaining a project vita (see bit.ly/project-resume). With this nudge, we developed our first center vita (although we call it a resume now) and have kept it updated and posted on our website ever since. We have long advocated for other ATE projects and centers to develop their own, using ours as a model if they wish (see evalu-ate.org/about/resume). We heartily concur with Smith and Florini’s statement that “few management and evaluation techniques seem as simple and effective as the project vita—surely a tool with those characteristics is worth sharing with a broader professional audience.”

Like your own resume or curriculum vita, a project resume conveys past accomplishments and capacity for future work. As such, directing proposal reviewers to an online resume is a quick way to share evidence of past performance. It also comes in handy at annual reporting time because it lists all major project activities, key personnel, collaborators, and products in one place. Checking your resume is much more efficient than retrospectively documenting a record of a year’s worth of work.

EvaluATE’s Emma Perk has developed a Project Resume Checklist as a step-by-step guide for project PIs (or others) to develop their own project resumes—check it out at bit.ly/resume-checklist and join us at our next webinar on May 13 to learn more (see p. 4)

About the Authors

Lori Wingate

Lori Wingate box with arrow

Executive Director, The Evaluation Center, Western Michigan University

Lori has a Ph.D. in evaluation and more than 20 years of experience in the field of program evaluation. She is co-principal investigator of EvaluATE and leads a variety of evaluation projects at WMU focused on STEM education, health, and higher education initiatives. Dr. Wingate has led numerous webinars and workshops on evaluation in a variety of contexts, including CDC University and the American Evaluation Association Summer Evaluation Institute. She is an associate member of the graduate faculty at WMU.

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