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Internships are increasingly promoted as a high impact practice to improve students' post-graduation employment outcomes, and educators often encourage students to participate in multiple internships. Yet, there is a lack of research on the sociocultural contexts associated with multiple internship participation. We present findings about the culture of multiple internship participation -- drawing on focus groups and one-year follow-up interviews with students at five colleges in the United States, along with interviews with their educators and an analysis of online documents about multiple internship participation. The evidence documents a particular culture of the multiple internship economy, representing multiple internships as a linear, progressive, goal-oriented cultural project to accumulate a marketable self; also described by anthropologists as a neoliberal conception of the self. This cultural conception of a marketable neoliberal self is comprised of signs -- such as narratives of multiple internships -- that provide evidence of skills and experiences, of persevering through obstacles, and of 'hustle' and a 'do what it takes' attitude, which can be deployed to navigate competitive gatekeeping encounters such as employment interviews. Based on these findings, we develop a sociocultural theory of multiple internship participation as a project of neoliberal gatekeeping navigation.

Background: Evaluation approaches that aim to support large-scale social change need to address the way freemarket logics have been established in the field since the early 1900s, normalizing dynamics such as (1) a focus on efficiency and accountability, (2) a perpetuation of deficitbased narratives about communities of color, and (3) a topdown approach to program development, in which funders define program goals and assessment criteria and outside academics are hired to provide research services. In consequence, evaluation often becomes a burdensome requirement that contributes to the extraction and devaluation of community expertise, rather than fostering learning, collaboration, critical reflection, and healing. Purpose: This paper (1) traces the history and current impacts of free-market logics in the evaluation field, and (2) discusses how the resulting dynamics can be addressed by highlighting one community-based organization’s innovative evaluation approach focused on community strengths and values, wellbeing, and critical consciousness building. Findings: By bringing together transformative evaluation and the HEART framework for healing ethno-racial trauma, Centro Hispano of Dane County prioritizes community interests, while challenging funders to rethink their evaluation requirements. This effort has created a double burden for agency staff to evaluate for both community priorities and funding requirements. The authors call for funders to rethink their evaluation expectations and emphasize the need to support community organizations’ in-house evaluation infrastructure, time for critical reflection, and the development of community- and asset-based, culturally responsive evaluation approaches and tools. Setting: The article centers Centro Hispano of Dane County (a Latinx-serving community-based organization in Madison, Wisconsin) and their current approach to evaluation within the Esperanza grant (a five-year Community Impact Grant from the Wisconsin Partnership Program). Research Design: This paper combines a review of the history of the evaluation field with a case study of a communitybased evaluation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]