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Northwestern Evaluators Present at the Annual Virtual Meeting of the American Evaluation Association

November 2, 2020

The annual meeting of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) was held October 26 - 31, 2020 virtually. Each year AEA selects a variety of individuals to lead sessions on cutting edge topics. While a smaller meeting this year, eight Northwestern evaluators were invited to participate: Leah C. Neubauer, Gregory Phillips II, and six additional members of Dr. Phillips’ EDIT research team: Josh Boegner, Aris Brown, Dylan Felt, Erik Elías Glenn, Esrea Perez-Bill, and Jackie Xu.

At the conference, participants delivered several well-received presentations. Mx. Felt and Dr. Phillips partnered with Dr. Sheila Robinson and Kim Leonard to deliver a workshop on “Designing Quality Survey Questions on Gender and Sex.” Their presentation drew on critical aspects of Design Thinking, as well as on Dr. Phillips and Mx. Felt’s own scholarship in LGBTQ+ demographic measurement, to push attendees to go beyond simple constructions of gender and sex, and to meaningfully interrogate these concepts in their own work.

In addition, the EDIT team members convened a meeting of evaluators who hold one or more marginalized identities to discuss what it means to practice transformative work as a member of a marginalized community. The discussion ranged from issues such as how we center ourselves when working on potentially traumatic subjects, to how we can decolonize our very methodologies to be an active part of creating a more just world.

Dr. Neubauer was selected to join a Presidential Strand Panel, “Shining a Light on Qualitative Methods Being Implicated in a Racist Project.” Neubauer and panelists Dr. Ayesha Boyce, Ms. Jara Dean-Coffey, Dr. Jori Hall, Dr. Rachael Lawrence, Dr. Sharon Rollis, and Dr. Katherine Tibbets were invited to discuss the role of qualitative methods in supporting beneficence and anti-racism in evaluation practice, education and training.

The American Evaluation Association is a professional association of evaluators devoted to the application and exploration of program evaluation, personnel evaluation, technology, and many other forms of evaluation. Evaluation involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses of programs, policies, personnel, products, and organizations to improve their effectiveness. AEA has approximately 7300 members representing all 50 states in the United States as well as over 80 foreign countries. If you are interested in learning more about the American Evaluation Association (AEA), visit here: https://www.eval.org/

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