Extension > Youth Development > Our staff> Pamela Larson Nippolt
Pamela Larson Nippolt
Evaluation and research specialist
Affiliate with the STEM Education Center
Current work, research and interests
Pamela Larson Nippolt provides leadership to program evaluation for youth development programs. She earned her doctorate at the University of Minnesota in 1996 in family social science with an emphasis in marriage and family therapy. Her dissertation research was based on a process evaluation of a collaboration between children's mental health services, law enforcement, and youthworkers. She led the implementation and training of staff in the use of a clinical rating scale to support their assessments of families in crisis.
Pam currently focuses her work on organizational development and evaluation in youth- and family-serving organizations. She brings wide and varied experiences that she draws on as an Extension professional. She has worked as a youth worker, a family therapist, a group facilitator, and an alternative school staff member. Subsequently, she provided program evaluation expertise and training through her work at Wilder Research, as a private consultant and as director of research and development at ServeMinnesota. She has experience in philanthropy, having served as program officer for a family foundation in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and has successfully written grant proposals that have brought private and public funding to advance programs serving families and youth.
Pam is currently co-PI on a National Science Foundation-funded project entitled "Driven to Discover: Enabling Authentic Inquiry through Citizen Science." This five-year project is testing a program model for youth-adult teams to investigate their questions about the natural world as they monitor monarch larvae and birds. Youth development programs partners, including 4-H, bring a foundation of training adults to apply experiential learning methods with youth to this project. Pam is a member of the project team refining a model that expands and deepens experiential learning through authentic scientific inquiry in non-formal learning environments.
Academic degrees and experience
- Ph.D., The University of Minnesota, College of Human Ecology. Family social science: Marriage and family therapy concentration. Dissertation title: "A Process Evaluation of a Mobile Crisis Team Program for Youth and Families."
- B.A., psychology, The College of Saint Catherine, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Selected publications
Larson Nippolt, P. (2012). 4-H Science: Evaluating Across Sites to Critically Examine Training of Adult Facilitators. Journal of Youth Development, 7(4).
Larson Nippolt, P., Pleskac, S., Schwartz, V. Swanson, D. (2009). "North Central Region 4-H Volunteers: Documenting Their Contributions and Volunteer Development."
Gardell, R. and Larson, P. (Dec. 1994). "Mobile Crisis Teams." Criminal Justice Newsletter.
Maddock, J., Larson, P. & Lally, C. (1991). “An Evaluation Protocol for Incest Family Functioning” in Family Sexual Abuse: Frontline Research and Evaluation (ed) Patton, M. Sage Publications.
Gusk, P. Minnesota Status of the Family Report (1986). University of Minnesota Extension.
Contact
nippolt@umn.edu
1-612-624-8445
University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus
