ABSTRACT
A developmental evaluation approach was applied to the external assessment of the Water Diplomacy PhD Program at Tufts University. This process systematically clarified the context and rationale of the program, examined its progress and outcomes, and provided the students with a novel strategy to define their own interdisciplinary learning strategy. This approach followed the eight principles of developmental evaluation in order to guide adaptation through periodic feedback and recommendations. Fidelity to all eight principles is essential to support development of new initiatives. This particular evaluation approach supported an ongoing continuous development of an interdisciplinary graduate training as part of an innovative process. Evaluation and assessment of interdisciplinary scholarship encounters difficulties when approaches based in single disciplines or traditional methods of program evaluation are applied without fully appreciating the nuances of interdisciplinarity. Too often, bibliometrics such as number of peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals and subsequent citations are used as the dominant standard to evaluate collaborative research and by extension graduate research trainee programs. This project demonstrated that assessment of interdisciplinary scholarship can feature criteria and metrics that are specifically chosen to be aligned with the goals and objectives of the program, and the process itself can be quite useful. This work succeeded because it featured a balance between the recognizable aspects of traditional program evaluation (which are important to funding agencies as well as individual departments) with novel approaches that provide sufficient flexibility for the program to grow and adapt in alignment with its specific goals.
