Date: Tuesday, February 3, 2026
We are pleased to welcome Dr. Guili Zhang as President of the American Evaluation Association for 2026. As an internationally recognized evaluator, researcher, and education leader, Dr. Zhang brings more than 20 years of experience advancing evaluation theory, methodology, and practice. She is a Professor of Research and Evaluation Methodology at East Carolina University and a prolific scholar whose work includes more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, seven books, and extensive leadership of large-scale, federally funded evaluations.
As President, Dr. Zhang’s aspirations include advancing methodological rigor, professional development, and inclusive leadership; strengthening governance and financial vitality; and expanding AEA’s global engagement—underscoring the essential role of evaluation in learning, improvement, and accountability across diverse contexts.
Dr. Guili Zhang serves as President of the American Evaluation Association (AEA).
She is Professor of Research and Evaluation Methodology in the Department of Educational Leadership and Foundations, College of Education, East Carolina University (ECU). She previously served for seven years as Department Chair of the Department of Special Education, Foundations, and Research at ECU, where she fostered a collaborative and inclusive academic environment, supported faculty development, significantly increased external funding, and expanded program enrollment.
Dr. Zhang earned her Ph.D. in Research and Evaluation Methodology from the University of Florida and completed postdoctoral advanced training in large-scale statistical data analysis at Stanford University. She is a nationally and internationally recognized evaluator, researcher, and education leader with more than 20 years of experience in evaluation teaching, research, and professional practice.
Her scholarship and leadership have been recognized with numerous prestigious national and international honors, including the Edward C. Pomeroy Award for Outstanding Contribution to Teacher Education from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), the Frontiers in Education Benjamin J. Dasher Best Paper Award, the American Society for Engineering Education Best Paper Award, and Outstanding Professor and Researcher recognition from the United States government. At East Carolina University, Dr. Zhang has received the Scholar-Teacher Award, the Five-Year Achievement Award for Excellence in Research, the Faculty Author Book Award, and was inducted into the Educators Hall of Fame in 2024.
Dr. Zhang has held numerous leadership roles in national and international professional organizations. Within AEA, she has served on the Board of Directors, as Chair of the Assessment in Higher Education TIG, Chair of the Quantitative Methods TIG, and as an Advisory Board Member of the American Journal of Evaluation. Her broader leadership includes serving as an Executive Council Member of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Measurement and Research Methodology Division, Chair of the AERA Outstanding Quantitative Dissertation Award Committee, President of the American Family Education Institute, Executive Director of the Art to Heart Foundation, and Chair of the University of North Carolina System Asian Pacific Islander Caucus.
A prolific scholar, Dr. Zhang has authored or co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, seven books, and 25 book chapters, and has delivered more than 200 national and international conference presentations and public lectures. She is co-author of the widely recognized book CIPP Evaluation Model: How to Evaluate for Improvement and Accountability. Her evaluation leadership includes directing or co-directing more than 35 large-scale national program and project evaluations, many funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education, including SUCCEED, MIDFIELD, IGERT, REU Sites, PRIMER, Teacher Quality Partnership, and Learning to Teach, Learning to Serve.
Internationally, Dr. Zhang works extensively across national borders. She has delivered workshops for university faculty, administrators, school principals, teachers, and parents worldwide and has served as a keynote speaker at major national and international conferences.
As President of the American Evaluation Association, Dr. Zhang is committed to advancing excellence, innovation, inclusivity, financial vitality, and global engagement in evaluation. Her leadership emphasizes strong governance, fiscal sustainability, methodological rigor, professional development, and the role of evaluation in supporting learning, improvement, and accountability across diverse contexts.
AEA is making several updates to the structure of the annual conference to improve clarity, quality, equity in presentation opportunities, and long-term sustainability. These changes include updates to proposal submission and review processes, as well as a new stream-based structure to help attendees better navigate conference content. The updates are informed by post-conference evaluation feedback, member input, and financial considerations at AEA’s current scale. A detailed explanation of what’s changing and why is available on the conference website, and the call for proposals will open in mid-March.
To ensure the American Evaluation Association can continue delivering high-quality education, publications, convening, and community-driven programs, individual AEA membership rates have increased in 2026.
Members who join or renew before March 6, 2026, are invited to use the following discount codes to take 26% off the updated membership rates.
You can apply the discount codes during the checkout process.
Full Membership
2-Year Membership
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Organizational members with a expiration date prior to May 1, 2026 will receive invoices directly from AEA and need not generate invoices at this time. Any organizational members expiring after that time may reach out to info@eval.org to request an invoice to lock in their current rate prior to the rate increase.
For retired or less professionally active members who wish to remain connected to AEA.
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AEA remains steadfast in our values and mission to support and elevate the field by providing you with the tools, resources, and professional development needed to help you navigate uncertainty with confidence. Now more than ever is it prudent that you are able to stay engaged with our vibrant community — whether through EvalTalk, professional learning activities, or Topical Interest Groups — to stay at the forefront of developments in our field.
If you are experiencing financial hardship due to recent impacts on the field brought upon by Executive Orders and/or shifting/shrinking funding priorities, please contact our Member Services Team at info@eval.org for options regarding membership dues payments. We’re here to help!
If you wish to sponsor a colleagues AEA membership, please contact info@eval.org to facilitate the membership payment on their behalf.
Beginning in 2026, the American Journal of Evaluation (AJE) will be delivered exclusively in a digital format for American Evaluation Association members. Members will continue to receive full access to the journal online, supporting a more flexible and timely content production schedule while ensuring continued access to high-quality evaluation scholarship.
Members may purchase one-off copies of an issue by visiting the AJE subscription site. Click the "Info" button beside the option "Individual, Single Print Issue," then contact the customer service team to place an order. If you are an author of a paper featured in the issue, you will qualify for SAGE's author discount (30%). You may contact SAGE Customer Services at 1-800-818-7243 / 1-805-583-9774 with details of the volume and issue you would like to purchase.
If you have questions about this change or your member access to AJE, we encourage you to contact AEA for additional information.
Following the April 2025 survey, AEA and the Board's Responding to Emerging Demands (RED) Team released a follow-up anonymous survey in September 2025 to our members to continue to better understand the impact of funding freezes, executive orders, and federal restructuring on evaluators and the field of evaluation. They further sought to track trends and changing responses based on feedback from the phase 1 survey in April. Additionally, they conducted listening sessions with key interest holders in the organization and parallel organizations in the field to support AEA's response efforts. The survey results provide a detailed picture of the circumstances faced by many AEA members.
Please note that you must be logged in as a member to view the results.
Review Survey Results
Catch up on all things AEA by viewing recent Town Hall and AEA's Annual Business Meeting recordings. Our most recent town hall focused on the upcoming AJE Call for Editors.
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Speaker: Chari Smith, President/Founder, Evaluation into Action, LLC
This course is designed for program evaluators who want to guide nonprofit organizations through an interactive 3-step process to create realistic and impactful evaluation plans. Learn how to analyze documents for alignment, gather insights through planning surveys, and lead interactive sessions that build consensus around key evaluation questions. Walk away with a framework to help nonprofits align their activities, outcomes, and impact while ensuring the plan is actionable.
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By Nathan Varnell, Consultant for the Evaluation Policy Task Force
Welcome back to the Policy Watch series for 2026. In this newsletter, we’re going to recap major events of the past few months and take a look ahead at what’s in store for government evaluation policy this year.
Appropriations Back in the News: Deep Cuts to Science Reversed, But Shutdown Possible The longest government shutdown in modern history ended November 12 after 43 days when Congress passed a continuing resolution (P.L. 119-37) that funded most federal agencies through January 30, 2026. Since then, Congress has continued making progress on FY 2026 funding bills in stages. The current package before Congress, which passed the House on January 22 and awaits Senate action before the January 30 deadline, covers defense, education, health, labor, transportation, housing, and more. Both the bills already passed and the ones awaiting action contain provisions relevant to the evaluation and research community – and if the funding deadline is missed, any active evaluation contracts and activities at affected agencies would be suspended during another partial shutdown. Agencies potentially affected include the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Institute of Education Sciences (IES), and more.
However, all of the funding packages under negotiation largely rejected the President’s proposed steep cuts for federal science agencies, instead passing more moderate budget decreases. The packages passed so far ensure funding for agencies that support significant evaluation and research activities across government, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), and others.
New Agendas for Evaluation and Evidence-Building in Federal Agencies The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) made several policy changes back in August 2025 that will have significant impacts on how federal agencies plan and report their evaluation activities this year and into the future.
The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Evidence Act) is the federal government's primary framework for ensuring that agencies use research and evaluation to inform policy decisions, requiring them to systematically plan how they will answer key questions about whether programs are working. Under the prior rules (set out by OMB Circular A-11 Sec. 290), agencies submitted Annual Evaluation Plans describing activities planned for the next federal fiscal year, which supported the goals of agencies’ overarching four-year Learning Agendas. Following the revisions to Circular A-11 in August, agencies will now consolidate their Learning Agendas and Annual Evaluation Plans into a single annual "Evidence Plan,” beginning with the FY 2027 planning cycle.
The requirements for the new Evidence Plans have several implications for federal evaluation activities. Under the revised structure, each agency will identify only three to five priority questions about their programs and policies, and all evidence activities addressing those questions must be completed within 12 months. This represents a departure from the multi-year timeframe that characterized the first round of Learning Agendas, which collectively included hundreds of priority research questions across Evidence Act agencies when published in 2022. Likewise, this narrower requirement for research questions as part of agencies’ strategic planning may potentially reduce the demand for new evaluations and evaluation findings.
It is important to note that the Evidence Plans capture only activities tied to an agency's designated priority questions, not the full range of evaluation work an agency may undertake. However, with fewer questions and a more compressed format, the evaluation community may have less visibility into the full range of agencies' planned evidence-building activities than the previous plans provided.
The timeline for the first Evidence Plans is already underway. Agencies submitted proposed priority questions to OMB in September 2025, with draft plans due in December. The FY 2027 Evidence Plans will be published alongside the President's Budget by the end of February 2026, reflecting activities for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2026. Agencies will also publish new Capacity Assessments on the same timeline. The format for these assessments, which evaluate agencies' ability to generate and use evidence, remains unchanged from the four-year cycle established under the original Evidence Act implementation.
The White House also released the President's Management Agenda in December, outlining three priority areas: reducing the federal workforce and eliminating programs deemed wasteful; increasing accountability for federal employees and contractors; and modernizing procurement.
Leadership Changes Inside the Beltway Long-time Comptroller General Gene Dodaro announced his retirement from leading the U.S. Government Accountability Office, with his term ending on December 29. Dodaro led GAO since 2008, guiding countless evaluations and setting standards for evidence-building across the federal government. The agency’s Chief Operating Officer Orice Williams Brown is leading the agency in the interim.
Looking Ahead Barring another extended shutdown, February should bring insight into how agencies will be adapting to new requirements and strategic goals with the release of their FY 2027 Evidence Plans. In the meantime, stay informed about changes to America’s evidence and evaluation infrastructure with updates from the American Statistical Association, COSSA’s Washington Update, and the Data Foundation.
The Evaluation Policy Task Force continues to monitor the impacts of federal policy decisions for the evaluation community. If you are aware of changes in government and the evaluation community that are impacting your work or the work of other evaluators, consider providing information to the Evaluation Policy Task Force via evaluationpolicy@eval.org.
This collection explores the relationship between evaluation and democracy amid growing democratic challenges and reduced public investment in evaluation. Drawing on historical and contemporary scholarship, the articles examine how evaluators have supported accountability, public interest, and democratic values across periods of political change. Together, the collection offers perspective and guidance for evaluators navigating the current moment. AEA members can view the collection now, and beginning in February 2026, it will be open access for three weeks to share with colleagues across the field.
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Process Evaluation of Teams: A Revised Framework for Use in Extension By: Jeantyl Norze, Cristina Connolly, and Stacey Stearns
From the Co-Editors: On the Breadth of AJE’s Contributions By: Laura Peck and Rodney Hopson
The Development and Implementation of an Interpersonal Skills Training Course for Young and Emerging Evaluators By: Jessica Renger and Stewart Donaldson
New Direction for Evaluation, Volume 2025, Issue 187: Moving Research on Evaluation Forward - Fall 2025
People-Centered Approaches That Can Expand the Role of Evaluation By: Karen Peterman, Regina Ayala Chavez, Allison Black Maier, Emily Ortiz Franco, Susan Park, Cheryl Ramirez Sangueza, Zola Roper, Isabel Sanchez Viruet, and Lila Uzzell
It Is About The People: Some Reflections and Musings on a People-Centered Evaluation Approach in a Milieu of Wicked Problems By: Rodney Hopson, Katrina L. Bledsoe, and Manuel Pérez-Troncoso
Utilizing People-Centered Evaluation Approaches to Advance Racial Equity By: Cherie M. Avent, Rebecca M. Teasdale, Xinru Yan, María B. Serrano-Abreu, and Ceily L. Moore
September 13, 1942 - September 30, 2025
AEA remembers Dr. Nancy Rowena Kingsbury, a pioneering evaluator and public servant whose career advanced evidence-based accountability across the U.S. government. She held senior leadership roles at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, becoming the first woman hired externally into an executive position and later leading Applied Research and Methods, where she oversaw hundreds of technical experts in statistics, economics, and evaluation. Her contributions were recognized with multiple Comptroller General Outstanding Achievement Awards and the ASPA Elmer B. Staats Lifetime Achievement Award.
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