Biography

Dr. David Diehl joined the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences in May of 2007. His appointment is 50% extension, 25% research and 25% teaching. Before joining the Department, he worked for nonprofit organizations seeking to apply research and evaluation knowledge in a variety of community settings. His recent evaluation projects include:

• Evaluation of UF IFAS Extension Family Nutrition Program
• Monitoring and Evaluation of Support to Agricultural Research and Development Program (SARD), a USAID-funded program in Haiti
• Climate Change to Climate Variability, an Extension education program for farmers in the Southeast US.
• Increasing Consumption of Specialty Crops by Enhancing their Quality and Safety, focused on getting better tasting fruits to markets.
• Assessing Food Safety and Persistence of Enteric Pathogens, a research project focused on enhancing food safety practices related to fresh sauces and salsas.
• United Way Strengthening Families, focused on promoting protective factors and positive parenting through United Way networks.
• Under One Sky, an asset-based adoption project for youth in the foster care system.
• Support of Extension Faculty Evaluation in the domains of nutrition, food safety, financial education, and parenting and family life.

Dr. Diehl teaches FYC 4622 “Planning and Evaluating Family, Youth and Community Science Programs” and FYC 6620 “Program Planning and Evaluation for Human Service Delivery.”

He has a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Wyoming and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Human Development from Cornell University.

He also has a wife, Elizabeth, who is a landscape architect, and three children, Logan, Isabella, and Leila, who keep him very busy and provide a real-life education in early childhood development.

Research Interests

David has two primary areas of research: 1) evaluation research related to the quality and effectiveness of social programs; and 2) the experience of youth in the child welfare system. Dr. Diehl utilizes quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods to address his research questions of interest. Current evaluation projects include a USAID grant to build capacity for agriculture in Haiti and the SNAP-Ed program in which he and his colleagues are collecting data on nutrition behaviors across a variety of nutrition curricula and audiences. His work in child welfare focuses on the experiences of older foster youth, adoption of foster youth. His research concentrates on

• Evaluation Research
• Youth in Foster Care
• Community resource organizations
• Child Welfare