A 2016 graduate of the Clinton School, Andrew Forsman currently works at the University of Arkansas for Medical Science as an internal evaluator for a group of early childhood education programs.
Forsman came to the Clinton School as a graduate of the University of Alabama with a degree in psychology. His public service experience, at that time, was limited to working as a mental health case manager in southern Mississippi.
Through his work with the Clinton School faculty and staff, Forsman was able to switch paths. His field work at UACS included time with the Arkansas Behavioral Health Planning Advisory Council, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, and Belize Ministry of Education. While he came to Little Rock with a strong research background, his time with the Clinton School showed him how to use that research as a tool in public service.
Can you tell me about your background in public service before coming to the
Clinton School? How did you hear about the Clinton School?
One of the things that set me apart from most of the people at the Clinton School is that I really didn’t have much public service experience before I applied. The main piece of public service experience I had was working as a traveling community mental health case manager. Other than that, I mostly had a research background.
I was on a track to apply for traditional social psychology Ph.D. programs, but I wasn’t finding many programs that fit with my values and what I was looking for. I wanted something that was very hands-on and applied, and was looking for universities that weren’t necessarily afraid to take a stance or pick a side so to speak—to say these are our values and here’s how we practice them. More than anything, I wanted to go somewhere where the work was fueled by a strong sense of purpose.
I found out about the Clinton School from my research mentor. She told me that this wasn’t a Ph.D. program, and wasn’t necessarily what I had been looking at, but the way I talked about what I wanted sounded like what the Clinton School was doing. She told me to check it out.
Once I looked into it, I thought it looked great, and I had to visit. I had never been to Arkansas before. My sister and I made the trip, I did an interview with Alex Thomas, and I knew I wanted to go there.
The Clinton School is where I really found work that was hands-on, applied, service-minded, multi-disciplinary, and that fit what I wanted to do. I may not have had the same type of direct service experience as a lot of my classmates and a lot of the other alums, but I was interested in using research to help people, and this was a way that I found to do that.
How much of your work with the Arkansas Behavioral Health Planning Advisory Council (ABHPAC) and the Arkansas Children’s Hospital was done through the Clinton School? How much of that helped you with your program evaluation piece?
Everything I did from working with ABHPAC up until I came to UAMS was done during my time at the Clinton School. We did asset mapping for ABHPAC and some basic program evaluation to help the staff at Arkansas Children’s Hospital create their own evaluation plan.
Then with Ministry of Education in Belize, I was doing evaluations of programs they have with financial literacy and evaluation capacity building work so they could bring themselves to a level where they could do more in the future. Similarly, with AmeriCorps and DHS I led a collaborative organizational change effort focused on building their evaluation capacity, trying to shore up some of their measures and making sure there are different evaluation processes for the different things that they do.
At the same time, I was there to do a case study of that whole process to inform the national AmeriCorps office. There are AmeriCorps offices across the country at the state level that are trying to upgrade their evaluation capacity, and some of them are having an easier time doing it than others. National was interested in using Arkansas as a test state, and while I am in there doing the capacity building, also do a case study of that change process to help other commissions in other states possibly learn from our experience.
All of this was done through the Clinton School. These were amazing opportunities, especially the work I did with AmeriCorps and the Ministry of Education in Belize, that I had never dreamed were possible for someone to do before I came to the Clinton School. I turned in that case study to the National Director of AmeriCorps, who I met at a speaker event—that’s kind of crazy to think about.
That was one of the things that I think is really unique about the program in comparison to others – you’re in this environment where if you work really hard and you’re dedicated, opportunities that don’t typically exist are found in abundance in the Clinton School environment. It feels like you’re standing next to a rocket ship and all you have to do is grab hold of the rocket ship and you’re gone. I’m glad I went. Those were hands down the greatest two years of my life.
Did your career path change after being in the Clinton School or were your interests upon leaving fairly consistent with those you had coming in?
Finding program evaluation as a branch of applied research, I didn’t really know that existed before I came to the Clinton School. Having such a hands-on, multi-disciplinary approach to research that was all about helping people learn and do good, better, was a perfect match for me.
Also, while at the Clinton School I really wanted to transition paths. I talked to the faculty and staff about how to do this successfully. Up until that point, I had a background and a degree in psychology. I had some experience working as a case manager, and my resume didn’t have much service experience. We would do resume workshops, and the staff told me my resume read like someone who wanted to do mental health research. I knew it read like that, but I wanted to switch. I wanted to do other things, so I asked how, and they helped me figure out how to make the switch, to start building a new “story” on my resume though actively shaping my fieldwork.
The way I look at my career now, rather than being an expert in any one content area or sector, I’m trying to perfect the same core set of evaluation skills while working with different organizations in different sectors. So I’m doing evaluation capacity-building and different types of evaluations, but I’m doing them with hospitals, nonprofits, nutrition education outreach programs, in national service settings, etc., and also doing them with government organizations in other countries. Now that I’ve graduated, I’m doing evaluation in early childhood education at UAMS.
Just being able to make that switch between feeling like I was not that far from becoming pigeon-holed as just a mental health researcher, to now where I feel like I can make the case in any job interview that I know how to do evaluation, and I can learn the content necessary around whatever sector I’m working in. Essentially, just being able to make that pivot and being able to make a unique sell for myself as a professional is very nice. Instead of “mental health researcher” my experience now reads “multi-sector evaluator” and that’s exactly the kind of career I want to have.
Can you explain what you’re doing at UAMS now?
I have a group of early childhood education programs that I am the Internal Evaluator for. I don’t do as many evaluations as I did in the past, because I also do a lot of research support for our faculty, but I’ve been working on finishing up creating a long-term evaluation framework for the main program I work with.
They are toward the end of their first grant cycle. They’ve tried a lot of different things, as programs do when getting off the ground and trying to get your service delivery perfected. Now they’re in a phase where they’re more stable, and they understand their market and how they need to approach what they’re doing. They really need help creating a stable evaluation framework for the future. So, it’s working with the trainers, and trying to create something that reflects the work that they do, and how to measure that, and tell that story.
One of the great things about where I’m at now is the faculty really encourage our people to develop their interests, even if it doesn’t fall strictly under what their job description is. I also do a lot of work with data visualization and making sure we are presenting our important work in ways that are visually and verbally compelling. I’ve also started going out and talking to people in my network and going to different events to sell some of my time as an evaluation contractor.
Is there anything you want to include from your time at the Clinton School?
The only thing I would add is I want to make sure I say that even though I put in a lot of work at the Clinton School, I had really great mentors too. Any time that I reached out to them, whether it be a problem I was having, or not knowing how to approach a certain situation, or even getting ready to go into a new situation that I think might be a problem, they would encourage me and help me think through how to deal with it. Having all of that support and having other people look out for you like that is great. It was one of the things that helped me be so successful at the Clinton School.
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