Date: Monday, September 28, 2026
Dear AEA Colleagues,
In just a few weeks, we will come together in Charlotte, North Carolina, for Evaluation 2026 as we mark AEA’s 40th anniversary. We will celebrate what we have built—and chart a bold path toward a stronger future for evaluation.
Our theme, Evaluation Across Boundaries, is a call to action. Evaluation’s future depends not only on the quality of our methods, but also on the standards, relationships, and institutions that sustain our work. These are among the foundations we can strengthen in Charlotte as we advance our profession together.
Join us November 16–20. Register by October 12 to take advantage of the early-bird registration rate.
Come to Charlotte for conversations that change your perspective and introductions that spark new collaborations. Reconnect with colleagues who share your commitment to evaluation. These experiences are part of what makes AEA a professional home—and part of what I most look forward to when we gather.
Those connections also matter to our growth as evaluators. Scholarship on evaluation capacity building and professional networks draws attention to evaluative thinking, shared learning, and the exchange of knowledge and experience (Khalil et al., 2016; Preskill & Boyle, 2008). The relationships we build at our conference can sustain that learning long after we return home.
As I emphasized earlier this year in the American Journal of Evaluation, crossing boundaries can strengthen evaluation’s rigor, relevance, and reach (Zhang, 2026). In Charlotte, let’s put that idea into practice. With a stream devoted to Building Professional Community Within and Beyond AEA, Evaluation 2026 places these connections at the heart of our shared experience.
Immerse yourself in your Topical Interest Group (TIG) community. Explore a session beyond your usual methodological, disciplinary, or substantive home. Bring a question you are still trying to answer. Seek out a colleague whose experience differs from yours. Invite a first-time attendee into the conversation. Each of us has something to contribute—and something to discover. Let’s make Charlotte a place where we strengthen not only our individual practice, but also our collective capacity to move evaluation forward.
The Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation (JCSEE) brings together multiple professional organizations, including AEA, to develop evaluation standards (JCSEE, n.d.-a). JCSEE is currently revising The Program Evaluation Standards. The current third edition was published in 2010—16 years ago—and organizes evaluation quality around five broad dimensions: utility, feasibility, propriety, accuracy, and evaluation accountability (JCSEE, n.d.-b; Yarbrough et al., 2010).
Evaluation standards help define the quality expectations that guide evaluation research and practice. A revision of this significance therefore carries real consequences for the field. After 16 years, this fourth-edition process gives us an important opportunity to examine what high-quality evaluation requires today—and to help shape standards capable of serving the profession into the future.
For more than a decade, I have consistently advocated for a common set of foundational standards for evaluation—not only standards for program evaluation. I believe those foundational standards should be broad enough to articulate quality expectations that apply across evaluation, while allowing additional standards or guidance to address the distinctive requirements of particular types of evaluation. Earlier this year, I met with a JCSEE representative and again emphasized that the fourth edition should be applicable across the full range of evaluation practice and that its title should reflect that broader scope. This is one important boundary for our field to cross: moving from standards centered on program evaluation toward a foundational framework that can guide evaluation more broadly.
A second, related boundary concerns the committee’s identity. JCSEE’s current name, Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, reflects its educational roots, yet evaluation today extends far beyond education. Over the years, I have advocated for a committee name that better reflects the field’s broader reach. In my meeting with the JCSEE representative, I shared recommendations for how the committee’s identity could evolve accordingly. Among the possibilities now under consideration is Joint Committee on Standards of Evaluation Excellence—a name that would preserve the familiar JCSEE abbreviation while more clearly reflecting evaluation’s relevance across fields and sectors.
Through JCSEE’s detailed survey process, I reviewed the standards closely and provided extensive recommendations on the wording, scope, and applicability of many individual standards. That level of attention matters because standards that guide high-quality evaluation deserve careful, sustained scrutiny.
Thank you to the AEA members who have already contributed input. I encourage others to continue the conversation at JCSEE’s National Public Hearing at Evaluation 2026 on November 19. This is our opportunity not simply to learn about the standards, but to help shape them—and to help ensure that the fourth edition reflects the breadth, complexity, and evolving needs of evaluation practice.
Our commitment to this professional community extends well beyond the days we spend together in Charlotte.
Thank you for believing in AEA and investing in its future. Together, we have made substantial financial progress this year. The Board, Financial Vitality Task Force, and staff are building on that momentum to strengthen AEA’s long-term sustainability and its capacity to serve our members and advance our profession. Financial vitality is not an end in itself—it supports the professional learning, meaningful connections, and responsive member services that make AEA our professional home. The goal is not to diminish our ambitions, but to build the capacity to fulfill them.
That same commitment to a strong association means staying closely connected to our members. Our Responding to Emerging Demands (RED) Team regularly holds listening sessions to help us understand what members are experiencing, identify emerging concerns, and remain responsive to changing circumstances. Those conversations help keep AEA’s work grounded in the experiences, concerns, and priorities of our members.
Our responsibility also extends to evaluation’s public role. In September, working with AEA’s Evaluation Policy Task Force, we submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Education on proposed revisions to the Education Department General Administrative Regulations (EDGAR). The proposal addresses evaluation quality and evaluator qualifications, relevant experience, and independence. Our participation brings evaluation expertise into a public rulemaking process and helps ensure that evaluators’ perspectives are represented when policies affect the practice and use of evaluation.
This anniversary belongs to all of us: the colleagues who helped build AEA, those who have found a professional home here, and those joining us for the first time. In Charlotte, we will celebrate the scholarship, practice, friendships, and mentorships that have shaped our profession—and welcome the voices that will carry it forward.
Bring a colleague. Encourage a student or emerging evaluator to join us. Come ready to celebrate, contribute, and leave with renewed purpose.
For colleagues who cannot join us in person, your contributions remain essential to AEA and to the future we are building together.
The best way to honor forty years is to build what comes next—with strong methods, responsive standards, meaningful relationships, and the institutional capacity to sustain them.
Evaluation matters. AEA matters. And your participation matters.
This is our moment. I look forward to celebrating with you in Charlotte—and carrying this work forward together.
With gratitude and anticipation, Guili Zhang, Ph.D. President American Evaluation Association
Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. (n.d.-a). Sponsoring organizations. https://evaluationstandards.org/about/sponsoring-organizations/
Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. (n.d.-b). Program Evaluation Standards. https://evaluationstandards.org/program/
Khalil, K. A., Ardoin, N. M., & Wojcik, D. J. (2016). The company you keep: Networks in a community of informal education evaluators. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 51, 7–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2016.08.006
Preskill, H., & Boyle, S. (2008). A multidisciplinary model of evaluation capacity building. American Journal of Evaluation, 29(4), 443–459. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214008324182
Yarbrough, D. B., Shulha, L. M., Hopson, R. K., & Caruthers, F. A. (2010). The Program Evaluation Standards: A guide for evaluators and evaluation users (3rd ed.). Corwin.
Zhang, G. (2026). Evaluation across boundaries: Building an unshakable future for evaluation through rigor, relevance, and reach. American Journal of Evaluation, 47(3), 476–485. https://doi.org/10.1177/10982140261457719