New Directions for Evaluation (NDE) Week: Welcome to New Directions for Evaluation Week with AEA365 by Elizabeth Sweeney

Date: Saturday, June 21, 2025

Greetings, I’m Elizabeth Sweeney, Managing Editor of New Directions for Evaluation (NDE) and Evaluation Associate at the Center for Research Evaluation (CERE). For the past two years, I’ve had the pleasure of supporting the work of NDE—and this week, I’m excited to welcome you to a special AEA365 series from our editorial team.

Our editorial team currently includes:

• Co-Editors in Chief, Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead, Professor of Research Methods, Measurement, and Evaluation at the University of Connecticut, and Sarah Mason, CERE Director; 
• Myself, an Evaluation Associate at CERE–serving as Managing Editor; and 
• Three Junior Editors, Amanda Sutter, Tanushree Banerjee, and Xinru Yan (you will learn more about them this week). Amanda is in her second year as a Junior Editor, while Tanushree and Xinru came on board in January. 
• Valerie Marshall, Naomi Stephen, and Meg Johnson also served as Junior Editors in 2024; you will hear from Valerie and Naomi later this week as well. 

This week we want to pique your interest in all-things-NDE. Here’s what’s coming up: 

• Day 1: All about NDE and how to engage with the journal
• Day 2: A sneak peek into the newly-launched INVitE-Pub Initiative, a two-year pilot to open new pathways to publishing in evaluation
• Day 3: Behind the scenes of the NDE Junior Editors program
• Day 4: What we heard: Insights from evaluators who haven’t published with NDE (yet!)
• Day 5: Perspectives from past authors, guest editors, and future contributors
• Day 6: Building and growing NDE’s social media presence
• Day 7: Tips on how YOU can become a guest editor

So what IS New Directions for Evaluation? NDE is one of two official journals of the American Evaluation Association (AEA). It is published quarterly, both in print and online. All AEA members have access to NDE as part of their membership. As a member, you can read all NDE content published since 1978 through the Wiley Online Library.

NDE publishes timely, thoughtful reflections on all things evaluation–with a special focus on innovative approaches, emerging methods, and fresh applications. True to our name, NDE aims to highlight what’s new and what’s next in the field. 

Our audience? Readers like you—evaluation practitioners, scholars, students, consultants, program administrators, and anyone curious about the theory, methods, and practice of evaluation.

Hot Tip

Each issue is devoted to a specific topic, so every issue is a special issue, like a book. With the guidance of the Editors-in-Chief, guest editors solicit, organize, review, and edit the contributions for each issue. 

Rad Resources

Check out our recent issues on:

• open science
• evaluation capacity building
• foresight and evaluation
• culturally responsive evaluation
• artificial intelligence 

Read the journal to stay up-to-date on the latest innovative evaluation topics. If you’re an AEA member, you have access to the entire online archive. Even if you’re not, articles are increasingly being published open access so they’re available to anyone with an internet connection. 

Engage with NDE through social media! And check out the rest of this week’s blog series to discover many other ways to engage.

We hope that you enjoy your week with NDE on AEA365. Leave a comment here, or find us on social media. We look forward to connecting with you!

The American Evaluation Association is hosting New Directions for Evaluation (NDE). The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from the NDE team. 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.