Conducting Transparent Evaluations 

As your year (Fall/Spring) or weeks (Summer) of PMM draws toward and end, interns participate in a process of evaluation within their ministerial contexts. The evaluative method is primarily one of reflection and conversation between the intern and the learning partners. Interns, then, report back to the colloquy concerning the content of these evaluations and to further reflect on them. The faculty colloquy leader then turns all evaluation forms in to the PMM office along with his or her own evaluation of the intern. The primary purpose of evaluation is to facilitate the intern's own learning in context, and the following method of evaluation is designed to empower the intern in this process of learning and formation for ministry. The steps provided give more detail of expectations and access to the needed documents.

Step 1. The respective PMM evaluations forms may be found on web-page: Handbook & Forms on the forms page under "PMM Evaluation Forms."

Clergy and Lay learning partners each complete an evaluation separately using the form: Clergy and Lay Partner Evaluation. Use extra pages as needed.

Seminarians complete the evaluation form: Student Self-evaluation.

Step 2. After separately completing the end-of-year evaluation forms, the learning partners and ministry intern should meet together in order to read and discuss each others' written evaluations. Both points of similarity and difference can provide fruitful areas for conversation together. A worksheet is provided to help record students’ insights.

Seminarians should use the worksheet: Worksheet for Student Discussions of Evaluations to record thoughts from this evaluation review meeting.

Step 3. Interns are responsible, then, for submitting the entire packet of evaluation forms to the colloquy leaders during their last colloquy meeting in the spring semester (Fall/Spring PMM) or the mandatory face-to-face session (Summer PMM). This packet should include these forms in the following order:
(1) The Student Evaluation Form
(2) The Clergy Learning Partner's Evaluation Form
(3) The Lay Learning Partner's Evaluation Form
(4) The Worksheet for Student Discussions of Evaluations

Step 4. Interns enrolled in PMM will have an opportunity to share these evaluations with their classmates in the PMM Colloquy at the seminary as well as with the instructors of that Colloquy. Use notes from the Worksheet for Student Discussions of Evaluations as a discussion aid.

Step 5. Colloquy leaders then complete and sign their own evaluation of the intern using a form for this purpose.

Step 6. Colloquy leaders bring the entire packet of evaluation forms, including their own evaluation of the intern to the PMM office to be filed. The deadline for returning all evaluation forms to the PMM office is the date grades are due to the registrar for returning students. These evaluative reports will then be kept in the intern’s PMM file at the seminary where the student will have access to them and where they are governed by FERPA. Evaluations from an internship will be shown subsequently outside of the seminary at the intern’s written and explicit request to do so.