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The Evaluation Center at WMU Week: Managing Student-evaluator Anxiety and Interpersonal Communication by Brandon Youker

¡Hola! Salam aleikoum! Salut!, Bozho! Olá! Osiyo! Wilujeng enjing! Sawubona! My name is Brandon Youker and I am the founding director of the Evaluation Lab, which is housed in The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The Evaluation Lab employs undergraduate and graduate students to design and conduct evaluations with Kalamazoo area public …

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The Evaluation Center at WMU Week: Developing Evaluation Elearning: Our Journey and Lessons Learned by Kelly Robertson and Lori Wingate

Hello, we are Kelly Robertson and Lori Wingate. We work at The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University. We’re here to tell you about our journey into new territory – developing elearning – and our lessons learned along the way. Valeo is The Evaluation Center’s new evaluation elearning program. We worked to combine evaluation theory, …

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The Evaluation Center at WMU Week: Scholarship Can Support Evaluation Success by Brad Watts

Greetings! I’m Brad Watts, the Assistant Director of The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University. During my eight-plus years in this role, I’ve had time to observe many of the unique ways our center has worked to be successful and survive for over 50(!) years. One way for a university-based evaluation center such as ours …

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The Evaluation Center at WMU Week: Evaluation Café: Four Decades of Learning and Growth by Samantha Hooker

Hi, I’m Samantha Hooker, and I serve as senior marketing specialist with The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University. One of the exciting parts of my job is overseeing and marketing our long-standing speaker series, Evaluation Café. It’s a space for evaluators to come together to learn about and discuss new ideas. Let’s rewind to …

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The Evaluation Center at WMU Week: In Defense of Checklists: More Than Checking a Box by Lori Wingate

Hello! I’m Lori Wingate, director of The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University. In 1999, less than two years after starting my job at The Evaluation Center, I was charged with developing and curating an online collection of evaluation checklists as part of a National Science Foundation-funded project to support STEM evaluators in their practice. …

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The Evaluation Center at WMU Week: Supporting Open-Access Evaluation Scholarship through JMDE by Lyssa Wilson Becho and Michael Harnar

Hello, we are Lyssa Wilson Becho and Michael Harnar, co-executive editors of the Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation (JMDE). Lyssa works in The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University (WMU) as a principal research associate, and Michael is the director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Evaluation at WMU. In today’s blog post, we want to highlight …

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The Evaluation Center at WMU Week: Celebrating The Evaluation Center’s 50 Years at Western Michigan University by Lori Wingate

Hello! I’m Lori Wingate, the executive director of The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University (WMU). This week of AEA365 celebrates The Evaluation Center’s 50 years at WMU. In this blog, I share a bit of the center’s history and factors I believe have contributed to our success and sustainability, mainly for the benefit of …

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So, You Want to Lead an Evaluation Practice or Center? by Sam Robison & Matt Feldmann

Hi! We are Matt Feldmann and Sam Robison, and we are here to provide you with some context for what it is like to lead an evaluation practice and/or a university based research center that serves higher education clients. Matt owns and operates Goshen Consulting, a small independent consulting firm in Edwardsville, Illinois. Sam is an Associate Professor of Research in the Social Research and Evaluation Center at LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana—note that I am not the director of our center, though I work closely with her and hope to have something useful to provide to this conversation!