Engaged Practitioner in Residence 2016-2017

The Engaged Practitioner in Residence program creates a campus presence for a community expert, generating opportunities for them to contribute to student, faculty, staff, and community-partnered activities. Each Engaged Practitioner in Residence (EPR) brings their own knowledge and expertise to this role, allowing for maximum innovation, creativity, and reach across the University.

The 2016-2017 year of the EPR was focused on evaluation as a form of community engaged scholarship. The 2016-2017 EPR, Andrew Taylor, is a program evaluation practitioner with more than 20 years experience.  He has a particular interest in collaborative approaches to evaluation, and on the link between evaluation and community action. 

About Andrew

Andrew Taylor is an evaluation practitioner who specializes in helping public sector organizations build cultures that promote critical reflection and ongoing learning. Andrew is co-owner of Taylor Newberry Consulting, based in Guelph (Ontario). He and his business partner Jason Newberry are both graduates of the Ph.D. program in Applied Social Psychology at the University of Guelph. Taylor Newberry Consulting has 4 full-time senior consultants and 5 part-time staff, many of whom are also graduate students at the University.

Many of Andrew’s projects involve community consultation, collaborative priority setting, and development of frameworks for tracking progress over time.  He has been the lead researcher for the Waterloo Region Vital Signs program for the last two years.

Andrew is also Resident Evaluation Expert at the Ontario Nonprofit Network, where he co-leads a multi-year project funded by a grant from the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration. This project is looking at how the evaluation agenda is set in Ontario’s nonprofit sector.  He teaches in the Program Evaluation as Organizational Development postgraduate certificate program at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Other recent clients have included municipal governments, grant making organizations, and non-profit agencies in communities across North America. Andrew also works frequently with larger provincial and national organizations like Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Canada, United Way Centraide Canada, Food Banks of Canada, the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Harwood Institute.

Ways to Collaborate

• Course content support (guest lectures, demonstrations, workshops)
• Consultation for those engaged in evaluation work on campus (particularly around practicing evaluation in a community engaged way).   
• Opportunities to strengthen teamwork dynamics among research collaborators & partners through workshops
• Ideas for engaging presentations, lectures and/or community events

Examples of activities conducted as part of Andrew's residence

"From Research to Action... and Back Again", presentation to the Graduate Student Learning KMb-KTT Learning Circle on March 9, 2017.