Program Design & Evaluation

Master of Arts

78680387-b2cb-489c-a40c-dc311de59624

Quick Facts

Credits Required: 30

Cost Per Credit: $725.00

Community Collaboration + Social Change + Research

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Complete in
As Little As
24 MONTHS

College of Social And Behavioral Sciences

Program Details

Learn to conduct research and leverage health and social equity through evidence. The MA in Program Design & Evaluation will teach you the execution, application and translation of research to address the most pressing challenges impacting our local and global communities. You will study and advance solutions to grand challenges through interdisciplinary, community-focused and research-informed monitoring and evaluation.

The knowledge and skills you will gain from this program will be transferable and applicable across a variety of industries. Through this MA, you will deepen your cross-cultural competencies, community engagement skills, and applied research experience. In turn, you will develop community-focused and research-based solutions to problems situated in social systems.

Upon graduation, you’ll be able to apply your skills to identify community needs related to issues like group-based disparities in education, employment, housing security, access to healthcare, and health-related outcomes. You’ll also be able to identify the populations disproportionately impacted by these disparities and evaluate and improve programs and strategies designed to lessen these disparities.

Faculty with expertise and decades of experience in community-focused, translational research from the Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW) will provide you with instruction and guidance. SIROW faculty have deep relationships with community organizations. They work in areas like economic disenfranchisement, immigration, social inclusion and equity, health-related disparities, LGBTQ civil liberties, harm reduction, homelessness, sexual health and HIV, gender equity, education equity, and criminal justice.

View detailed program information

*Residents of some U.S. Territories may not be eligible. Please see our Eligibility & State Authorization page for more information.

Courses

The core courses required for this program include:

This course provides an overview of key challenges of our time; delving deeply into selected issues to identify and understand applied research approaches to these issues. You will consider theoretical frameworks used to understand and characterize challenges and problems with particular emphasis on contextual factors that create or surround the problem.

Focus on models of decision science and solution identification in applied settings. Examine how these models have been applied to prominent challenges, or problems, of the time. You will also learn about models of behavior and system change, and considerations of solution feasibility and contextual parameters as they pertain to the viability of potential solutions. Learn how to apply these models to challenges you are interested in, such as creating sustainable agriculture, reducing homelessness and increasing healthy behaviors.

This course focuses on frameworks and methods of planning, implementation science and project scale up. You will apply these frameworks and approaches to critique and improve policy or program intervention.

In this course, you will cover the methods and tools of monitoring and evaluation used to address identified challenges or problems. This course will survey different goals of monitoring and evaluation including, for example, practice or program improvement and impact assessment.

Learn the models and methods of disseminating research findings to inform movement to address a challenge or problem. You will learn about audience, the audience and goal-specific messaging framing, data analytics, and findings presentation.

This course will introduce students to the history and practice of community-based participatory and action research (CBP-AR). Students will critique research approaches to selected challenges using the lens of CBP-AR, and will recommend solutions to better align research with communities.

This course will focus on theories and practice of culturally responsive engagement with focus on instructor-selected diverse populations who have historically faced group-based social inequities (historically referred to as vulnerable such as Indigenous populations, women in prison, people who misuse drugs, transgender populations, refugee, and immigrant populations. Students will discuss approaches and issues related to engaging diverse populations in research, program evaluation, coalitions, and translation of evaluation findings.

MA students will select a challenge or problem area of focus to collectively plan one of several things: a process for informed problem solving, solution scale up, monitoring and evaluation plan, or needs assessment. This should be accomplished with a coalition or partner organization.