The Program Evaluation and Education Research (PEER) Internship Program for Undergraduate Students

This brief summarizes the pilot year evaluation report that details the implementation and impact of the Program Evaluation and Education Research (PEER) internship program for undergraduate students. Data were collected via monthly memos, administrative documents and intern culminating assignments as well as surveys, interviews and focus groups with interns and full-time PEER Group staff members. Findings suggest that the program was successful in accomplishing its three goals.

During the 2020-2021 academic year, the Program Evaluation and Education Research (PEER) Group launched its first-ever undergraduate internship program. The program hosted five paid interns in partnership with the Federal Work-Study Program. Via the internship, undergraduate students received training in educational research and evaluation techniques while contributing to PEER Group projects. This program was strategically aligned with the Friday Institute’s impact area of “cultivating equity in education through equity-mindedness”, and students from historically marginalized communities were encouraged to apply. The program had three goals: (1) expose interns to the environment and expectations of educational research and evaluation, (2) develop interns’ transferable workforce skills, and (3) enhance PEER Group operations. This evaluation report details the implementation and impact of this program during its pilot year. Data were collected via monthly memos, administrative documents and intern culminating assignments as well as surveys, interviews and focus groups with interns and full-time PEER Group staff members. Findings suggest that the program was successful in accomplishing its three goals. This report is organized into four sections. Section one provides an overview of the internship program. Section two chronicles how the internship program was implemented in its pilot year and illustrates a snapshot of the inaugural cohort. Section three recounts how qualitative and quantitative data was collected and analyzed and then draws on those data to measure the program's impact on its three goals. Section four describes lessons learned from the pilot year as well as recommendations for the future.