AEA365 Contributor, Curated by Elizabeth DiLuzio

What is a “Hoosier”? by Jennifer Borland

Hello, my name is Jennifer Borland. I am the Director of Research Programs at Rockman et al Cooperative, a research and evaluation firm that specializes in the evaluation of educational programs and media in formal and informal settings. I’ve been working as an evaluator for more than 25 years and I am also proud to say that I was born, raised, and currently work in the great state of Indiana!  

Madam CJ Walker Was Self-made, Right Down the Street by Kyle Hannon

I grew up in Indianapolis, lived in Indianapolis, and worked in Indianapolis for many years. I probably drove past the Walker Theater 1,000 times. I kind of knew it meant something important about history, Black history in particular, but I never stopped to learn. In my defense, the Internet wasn’t a thing yet.

I’m Kyle Hannon from Filibuster Press—a community development and book publishing consultancy based in Bloomington, Indiana.

Evaluating a Museum? Where to Begin? By Karen Breece

Greetings from Indianapolis! I am Karen Breece, an internal evaluator for Conner Prairie Museum in Fishers, Indiana. You may be like me in that every time you go to a new city you want to see a local museum (or maybe that’s a me thing). While you’re visiting our wonderful Indy attractions like The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, Newfields, or Conner Prairie, you may wonder how these places measure their impact. Museums are for learning, but are people actually LEARNING when they go to these places? One fun fact is that all of the attractions I named have full-time internal evaluators. It’s up to us to show that museums make a difference, and we have a few unique tools up our sleeves to do so.

Indianapolis Cultural Attractions! by Susan Foutz

Hi! I’m Susan Foutz, Director of Research and Evaluation at Indiana’s most visited cultural organization, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. Founded in 1925, we are proud to as our role as a community anchor and tourist attraction. I’m sure you know that Indianapolis is home sports teams and world-class sporting events, from the Colts, Pacers, and Fever, to Big Ten conference events, and the Indy 500. As a mid-sized city and state capital, Indianapolis also has a lot to offer in terms of arts and culture. Here’s a round-up of fall exhibits at local museums, organized by their distance from the conference location at the JW Marriott.

Welcome to Local Arrangement Working Group Week on AEA365 by Robert Hoke

I am Robert Hoke, an Indianapolis- based independent consultant, an AEA Conference attendee since 2001, and a member of this year’s Local Arrangement Working Group.  The LAWG and the Indiana Evaluation Association look forward to welcoming all of you to Indianapolis in October. To kick off this week of posts, we acknowledge that the conference’s location is the ancestral territory of the Miami, Potawatomi, and Shawnee people.

This week’s posts will provide information about things to do in Indianapolis, a little history, and some insights into evaluation work in Indiana.

Tech TIG Week: How Will Evaluators Work with Blockchain? by Michael Cooper

Greetings.  I’m Michael Cooper and I am a Principal Expert with Integrity Global.  I work with groups like the Pulte Institute at Notre Dame, CALS Global at Virginia Tech and the UKAID Frontier Tech Hub on how, as researchers and evaluators, we can measure the value-add of using a blockchain and how we can use …

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Tech TIG Week: Supporting Data Analytics with Google BigQuery by Wai Lam Wong

Hi everyone, my name is Wai Lam Wong and I’m an information systems analyst at a community health organization in California. My academic background is in computational social sciences and I’m always looking for ways to leverage technology for social impact. This post is about using Google BigQuery to enable a small nonprofit’s project team …

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Tech TIG Week: Lessons Learned when Implementing an Electronic Health Record in Behavioral Health by Amanda Zwirecki

Hello AEA 365! I’m Amanda Zwireki, I am the Director of Evaluation at a Certified Community Behavioral Health Center (CCBHC) in New York State. I played an integral role in a multi-year organization-wide effort to improve how we capture behavioral health data to support the highest level of care and data-driven decision making. I would …

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Tech TIG Week: Exploring the Potential of Automated Qualitative Coding by Vo Ram Yoon

Hello! I am Vo Ram Yoon (he/him/his). I am a Data and Evaluation Consultant at the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium (MAEC), where I work on equity audits for public school districts and nonprofit organizations. As a queer, Korean Bolivian evaluator, I am a proponent for using quantitative and qualitative methods to honor the complex narratives and …

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Tech TIG Week: Understanding Sources of Bias in Big Data by Michael Bamberger

Greetings from Portland, Oregon! My name is Michael Bamberger and I am Program Chair for the Integrating Technology into Evaluation (ITE) TIG, where we have been following the exciting developments concerning the introduction of big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) into research and evaluation. While sharing the excitement about these game-changing developments for the practice …

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