Date: Monday, September 8, 2025
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Greetings AEA365 community! My name is Nicki Sheffield, AEA staff liaison on the AEA Awards Working Group. On behalf of AEA and the Awards Working Group, I’m excited to share the recipients of the 2025 AEA Awards!
Please join us in congratulating these outstanding evaluators for their accomplishments and contributions to the field. To learn more about the 2025 Award recipients, click here!
Cherie Avent, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
“I am deeply honored to receive the American Evaluation Association’s Marcia Guttentag Promising New Evaluator Award. Dr. Guttentag’s scholarship highlighted the need for shifting towards a focus on context and the inclusion of diverse perspectives and methods, which are key ideas that shape my scholarship, practice, and teaching. This award reinforces my commitment to centering communities, honoring their lived experiences, and using evaluation as a tool for illuminating inequities and promoting meaningful impact that advances social justice.”
AEA Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Evaluation Practice Award
Leslie Goodyear, Education Development Center
“I am truly honored and humbled to receive the AEA Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Evaluation Practice Award. Practicing evaluation is relational, dynamic, generative, challenging and, above all, rewarding. I feel lucky to get to contribute to the amazing work programs do every day to make our world better. I’m so grateful for the generosity and creativity of my AEA friends and colleagues who work continuously to advance the evaluation field and who, together, constitute the amazing professional community that has been my home for 30 years.”
AEA Robert Ingle Service Award
Sharon Rallis, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“Receiving the Robert Ingle Service Award is an honor that means so much to me, especially since I remember well Bob Ingle’s remarkable service to our association. AEA has been my professional home since even before we became AEA and has shaped my career, my values, and my practices. While the service award testifies to my ‘sustained and valuable service to AEA as an organization,’ my contributions pale in comparison to how the AEA community has served me—by introducing me to new perspectives, demanding clear thinking, encouraging me to embrace opportunities, constructively critiquing my work, supporting me at every step, and providing treasured friends.
AEA Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Government Award
Toni Watt, Texas State University
“It is an honor to receive the AEA Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Government Award. I have been working in this field for over 30 years and believe in the power of evaluation. I would like to extend my gratitude to the American Evaluation Association for supporting the important work of the evaluation community.”
AEA Research on Evaluation Award
Tarek Azzam, Center for Evaluation and Assessment, University of California, Santa Barbara
“This award means a lot to me personally as I have dedicated much of my career researching evaluation practice and methods to help support our field. This is why I am deeply grateful and honored to receive this recognition from the American Evaluation Association. I also want to acknowledge and thank all the people I have collaborated with whose support and guidance was invaluable.”
AEA Paul F. Lazarsfeld Evaluation Theory Award
Apollo Nkwake, Action Against Hunger USA
“Receiving this award is an incredible honor that I see as a shared recognition of the field’s growing commitment to critically examining the assumptions embedded in our work. It reinforces my belief that the future of effective evaluation lies in our courage to embrace complexity and ensure our theories are as dynamic and diverse as the communities we serve.”
The award winners will be recognized during each plenary session at Evaluation 2025, November 10–14 in Kansas City, MO. Register for the conference to join us in celebrating these recipients!
Once again, congratulations to all the 2025 Award Recipients! We look forward to celebrating with you at Evaluation 2025.
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.