Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Message From the President
From AEA President Veronica Olazabal
.png?ver=iQOOIcA8bIfqPGwxOvfhWg%3d%3d)
WE DID IT!
Amidst the polycrisis we are facing, last month ~2,700 of us gathered in New Orleans to deliberate on the critical need to (re) shape evaluation together! We dove deep into topics such as racial equity and decolonization, new actors, and the role of digital data. We also explored feedback and localization as cross-cutting themes.
Important to make visible is that a group of 35 representatives from around the world worked really hard to:
- Create a drumbeat to the conference with this conference video (2 minutes) which laid out the value proposition of the theme. Watch here!
- Launch a Virtual Pre-conference Presidential Series open to all so that the annual conference served as a bookend to the theme, and not the only time we discussed these topics. See here if you missed it!
- Spotlight new and diverse voices during the Presidential Strand including opening the conference with Edgar Villanueva who provocatively set the stage with a fireside chat focused on decolonization. (You should know that rarely have we included a non-evaluator as our opening keynote speaker.)
- Disrupt the way we plan for these events with a distributed leadership approach to design a more diverse, authentic Presidential Strand Program to hold ourselves accountable to our values on equity and inclusion.
Much appreciation goes to this group and our AEA staff team including Anisha Lewis and Zachary Grays.
As I wrap up my year as President, I turn to the many lessons learned and the many voices whispering in my ear on what I could have done differently. Here are a few thoughts:
- On distributed leadership. It was harder and transactionally heavier than you can imagine. While the end result was robust, it could have been better. To ensure we integrate ways to approach our work better, our committee is meeting with incoming AEA President Corrie Whitmore to debrief.
- On sharing power. To provide time for the many voices on the “main stage” plenary sessions, I had to give up my time to address you as a keynote speaker. I have thought about it, the trade-off was worth it as you heard directly from the voices I would have harkened to anyway and I did not appropriate anyone’s IP. Any other way would not have been authentic to the Association I hope we will become.
- On legacy. I have also been on my own speaker journey, discussing the changing times and changing needs of our evaluation profession, on becoming your President. I will write about it and share before the year ends to ensure my voice, and representation as the first woman of color, is not lost in our scholarly literature and history.
All and all I am reminded that this work is voluntary and that it takes a large and dedicated community to hold our evaluation profession together, and keep it moving forward. It was definitely a risk to hold an in-person conference during a pandemic. And we missed many of our colleagues who would have been put in-harms way to attend. Moving forward, AEA, its Board and the Conference Working Group are considering how to (re) shape the design of our convenings in a way that is aligned to our values.
Stay tuned!
Walking the Talk: Andrea Guerrero-Guajardo
.jpg?ver=WNadcTxpNjWtDkePDgZETg%3d%3d)
Andrea Guerrero-Guajardo, PhD, MPH
Division Director, Preventative Health and Environmental Services
Bexar County, Texas
I came to AEA in 2013 as a mid-career practitioner-evaluator and quickly found a community that felt familiar to me in many ways. I nominated myself for Multiethnic Issues in Evaluation TIG leadership at my first AEA conference not really understanding what was expected of me and began to serve the organization with enthusiasm. Subsequently, I became a founding member of the Latino Responsive Evaluation Discourse and Indigenous Peoples in Evaluation TIGs and went on to create connections to some of the most brilliant minds I know and discover deep and enduring personal and professional relationships.
“Public good, program improvement, policy formation, community, inclusiveness, diversity” are central to the vision of AEA and are also terms that occur often in public health contexts. These words, along with my personal experiences and professional expertise, are the foundational threads in the fabric of my practice and praxis in my current role as Director of Public Health at Bexar County, Texas.
The field of public health encompasses many areas of work including environmental health, occupational health, global health, injury & and violence prevention, and behavior and mental health, among others. For better and for worse, the harsh light of reality has been focused on the field of communicable disease control since March 2020 and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been difficult lessons learned, but those difficulties have been buoyed by the incredible success of the vaccine and basic public health practices of masking and handwashing. The values outlined by AEA have provided the roadmap that guides the services provided by city and county government and other healthcare organizations to reach the populations that have been made most vulnerable to severe illness and death from COVID-19. Three years into the pandemic, public health professionals are again creating strategies with renewed vigor and in consideration of the impact of co-morbidities on the severity of COVID-19 infection to address health disparities, upstream inequities, and aspects of heath that are socially determined.
In writing this piece about how the mission, vision, and values impact my work, it also occurred to me that “my work” is not just my job in public health. I am very fortunate to have found an academic home at AEA where I am welcomed and supported by the community of like-minded evaluators. Because I value this community, I am also compelled to apply the words of the mission, vision, and values to AEA as an organization, its members, my peers, and myself. I will continue to hold us all accountable to these words that guide us and the practice of high-quality, ethically defensible, culturally responsive evaluation practices.
Evaluation 2022 TIG Fair and Reception
Thank you to those who attended the Topical Interest Group Fair and Reception at Evaluation 2022! This was our first time hosting an evening event for attendees to meet AEA’s 60 Topical Interest Groups (TIG).
We created this event at Evaluation 2022 to give you an opportunity to learn more about our TIGs' year-long initiatives and how to get involved. We hope you enjoyed the TIG Fair and Reception and we hope you were able to learn more about AEA TIGs.
International Evaluation
- The International and Cross-Cultural Evaluation (ICCE) Topical Interest Group (TIG) held its annual meeting virtually on November 15. A review of 2022 activities and planning for 2023 took place. The slides and discussion points from the meeting can be found on the ICCE’s AEA Connect page. Additionally, the ICCE TIG is seeking a Collaboration and Engagement Chair! If interested, please send an email to any of the Board members with a brief intro, why you are interested, and your ideas for 2023. Deadline: December 15 (see slides 14-16 of the meeting deck for more details)
- On 7 December 2022, the EVALSDGs Guidance Group will hold EVALSDGs Insight Dialogue #5 on the topic “Mainstreaming Environmental Sustainability in Evaluations where the environment is not the focus“. To join this virtual discussion, register here.
- The European Evaluation Society (EES) is calling for expressions of interest in hosting the 15th EES Biennial Conference in 2024. For more information, see the posting here.
- The EvalPartners family is delighted to announce that the Global Evaluation Agenda roadmap has now entered the co-creation phase. For more information, including a presentation of salient points and a two-page summary, see this update.
Policy Watch: Federal Evaluation Council Recognizes Evaluation Leaders in Agencies
By Katie Howell, consultant to the Evaluation Policy Task Force
Last month, the Evidence Team at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), on behalf of the Evaluation Officer Council, announced the winners of the Second Annual Evaluation Community Awards. The 2022 awardees were recognized as inspiring, innovative individuals or teams in the federal government working to advance evaluation and evidence-based policymaking.
Out of 30 nominations from 16 different federal agencies, an OMB panel selected seven winners across six categories. The awardees represent evaluators from various agencies, including Housing and Urban Development, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, Health and Human Services, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Evidence Team announcement provides detailed profiles (see links above) for each of the 2022 winners, including anonymous excerpts from their nominations, to tell their stories and demonstrate their critical role in the federal evaluation community.
Evaluation has received increasingly more attention in the federal government in recent years. From agencies establishing Evaluation Officers and publishing multi-year learning agendas and evaluation plans – as required by the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 – and the 2021 memorandum on evidence-based policymaking, to the FY 2022 President’s Budget including explicit calls for evaluation capacity-building and the launch of the White House Year of Evidence for Action, policies have aimed to elevate the role of evaluation.
However, as the American Evaluation Association has noted in recent years, the federal evaluation community remains under-resourced to comply with these measures and most effectively help strengthen the government’s capacity for evidence-based policies and programs. Awards to government evaluation leaders are an important opportunity to amplify the role of evaluation in the federal government and recognize the evaluation community for their significant contributions to support agency missions, activities, and operations.
Evaluation 2022: The Highlights
Thank you to those who joined us at Evaluation 2022: (re) shaping evaluation together. A few highlights of Eval22 include:
- Plenary and Presidential Strand sessions were our top-attended sessions
- We welcomed more than 2,700 attendees for the in-person experience and more than 360 attendees for the digital experience.
- 26 partners joined us in the virtual Exhibit Hall, where they chatted with attendees about their products, offerings and organizations.
- The AEA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group co-sponsored an exhibit with The May 13 Group, titled “The Power of Perspective: Generations of Evaluators Generating Chance.” This installation included a timeline of events and movements around the world with key moments in and around the field of evaluation, spanning from 1972-2022. The exhibit also included profiles of scholar-practitioners, an interactive DEI journey map, a table of artifacts and a reflective corner.
Mark your calendars for Evaluation 2023: The Power of Story on October 9-14, 2023 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Learn more about the Evaluation 2023 theme.
American Journal of Evaluation Editor-in-Chief Application
The American Journal of Evaluation is a leading resource for scholarship on evaluation theory, methods, and practice. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the journal’s direction and mission, including soliciting articles, overseeing the peer-review process, making editorial decisions, and editing submissions in a timely manner. The Editor-in-Chief leads and manages a diverse editorial board, team of associate editors and interacts with the SAGE Publications production editorial team. They will collaborate with the American Evaluation Association (AEA) and the journal’s publisher to maintain the journal’s longstanding excellence and increase its visibility, readership, impact, and relevance to evaluation professionals and scholars.
Term: Three (3) years, beginning January 1, 2023
Application materials must be submitted by December 15, 2022 to AEA’s Executive Director, Anisha Lewis (alewis@eval.org).
Application Instructions
Proposals for New Directions for Evaluation
New Directions for Evaluation (NDE), one of the American Evaluation Association’s flagship journals, is soliciting proposals for upcoming issues (Summer 2023 and beyond). We welcome issues that highlight and strive to find creative solutions to the challenges we experience as evaluation practitioners; connect research, theory, and practice; explicate how evaluation can meaningfully contribute to the advancement of society, social betterment, and address the issues of our time; and connect the practice and scholarship within evaluation to other substantive disciplines. Over the past six years, the current Co Editors-in-Chief have worked with a wide array of guest editors to publish on a variety of topics. The most recent issues include:
- Summer 2022: Evaluating a National Biomedical Diversity Initiative guest edited by Lourdes Guerrero and Christina Christie
- Spring 2022: Evaluation Policy guest edited by Mel Mark and Nicholas Hart
- Winter 2021: Case-centered Teaching and Learning in Evaluation guest edited by Leanne Kallemeyn, Isabelle Bourgeois, and David Ensminger
- Fall 2021: Evaluating Advocacy and Policy Change: The State of the Field and Innovations guest edited by Sarah Stachowiak, Jared Raynor, and Julia Coffman
- Summer 2021: Systems and Complexity-Informed Evaluation: Insights from Practice guest edited by Emily Gates, Mat Walton, and Pablo Vidueira
Should you have an idea that you feel is a good fit for an NDE issue, please feel free to reach out to the Co Editors-in-Chief at NDE@eval.org to discuss your idea. Additional information about the journal, including what to include in a proposal submission can be found on the AEA website here. We look forward to hearing your ideas and continuing to share the great work of our community through NDE.
Upcoming ECB event for Students and Recent Graduates
Are you a student or recent graduate who is interested in learning more about how to build evaluation capacity in organizations?
Would you like to work on interdisciplinary teams to create a practical solution to an evaluation capacity-building challenge identified by an organization? If so, consider participating in the Max Bell School of Public Policy’s Evaluation Capacity Case Challenge (EC3)!
Some perks include:
- Training from leading experts in the field of evaluation and evaluation capacity building
- A stipend for engaging in EC3
- Up to $1,000 CAD for each member of the winning team to support travel to the 2023 Canadian Evaluation Society conference!
For more information about the challenge and to apply, visit our website: https://www.mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/initiatives/ec3
Applications are due December 15, 2022.
Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact Dr. Leslie A. Fierro at Leslie.Fierro@mcgill.ca.
Save on Publications
AEA members receive discounts from certain publishers. Use the special codes below during your next purchase:
- Guilford Press – use the code ZFAEA online or by phone (1-800-365-7006 or 1-212-966-6708), fax or postal mail for a 25% discount on Guilford Press titles.
- Lyceum Books, Inc. – use the code AEA at check-out for a 20% discount off Lyceum products. This code can also be used through phone or postal mail.
- Oxford Press – use the code AEA20 for a 20% discount on select social work and research method titles when you order through the website.
- Routledge – use AEA20 to receive a 20% discount when you order through the website.
- SAGE Publications and Corwin Press Products – use code SAGE20 to receive a 20% discount off SAGE products.
Sign up for upcoming sessions in our Digital Knowledge Hub! Explore the upcoming sessions below. Spots are limited, so register now for one of the following spots:
Upcoming eStudies
eLearning Course
AEA Focus Group eLearning Course
Course Facilitator: Rhonda Williams, PhD
Have you ever been tasked with obtaining feedback from a group of stakeholders? Do you have an interest in improving your strategies for focus groups? Have you thought about improving the coordination and planning for others to share their thoughts?
Purchase the Focus Group eLearning Course to:
- Apply the steps for focus group design, objective setting, preparation, recruitment, conducting, analyzing, and reporting.
- Analyze the use of focus groups in an evaluation context.
- Execute and summarize findings from focus groups.
- Sell stakeholders on the resources required to execute a focus group.
Register Now
eLearning Course
Introduction to Evaluation 101
Introduction to Evaluation 101 is designed to teach you fundamental evaluation skills, allowing you to maximize the use of your evaluation and drive it home for the end user.
Purchase the Introduction to Evaluation 101 eLearning Course to:
- Describe the six steps of CDC's framework for program evaluation and their application to any evaluation.
- State program evaluation standards and how they help make intelligent choices at each step.
- Use logic models as a tool for program description.
- Identify evaluation focus, balancing the utility and feasibility standards.
- Determine an appropriate effective data collection and analysis approach.
- Discuss ways to share findings in a way that maximizes the use.
Register Now
New Jobs & RFPs from AEA's Career Center
What's new this month in the AEA Online Career Center? The following positions have been added recently:
Explore the Online Career Center
Get Involved with AEA
Thank You, AEA Longstanding Members!
AEA would like to recognize and thank some of its most longstanding members. Click here to view individuals who are celebrating 5+, 10+, 20+, and 30+ years with the association this month!
Welcome to Our New Members!
AEA would like to welcome those who have recently joined the association. Click here to view a list of AEA's newest members.
About Us
AEA is a professional association of evaluators devoted to the application and exploration of evaluation in all its forms.
The association's mission is to:
- Improve evaluation practices and methods
- Increase evaluation use
- Promote evaluation as a profession
- Support the contribution of evaluation to the generation of theory and knowledge about effective human action
Email: info@eval.org
Phone: 1-202-367-1166 or 1-888-232-2275 (U.S. and Canada only)
Website: www.eval.org