TO:           All AEA Members (and Friends)

FROM:     Jennifer Greene, President AEA 2011

RE:           Special Call for Proposals for the Presidential Strand  

AEA will be gathering in Anaheim the first week in November for our annual conference. I have chosen to explore Values and Valuing as the Presidential Theme this year and encourage you to consider the ways in which values and the process of valuing impact your professional work. This year, I would also like to experiment with some new directions, through this call for proposals for special presentations that are creative in format and expression.

The values dimensions of human experience, and thus of our work as evaluators, are not always fully or well represented by our standard use of textual reports, supplemented by visual displays (tables, charts, path models, program theory diagrams, and more). Values are rooted in convictions and ideals, and thus in passions and emotions. Passion and emotion are not always easily communicated through our standard forms of reporting. So, the use of "alternative representations" for reporting our evaluation results can convey the values dimensions of our work more fully to our stakeholder audiences.

Coming from developments in interpretive ways of knowing, "alternative representations" for reporting evaluation findings borrow forms from the humanities and the arts - forms that inherently encompass both our rational and empirical reasoning and our emotional sense-making and understanding. These forms include stories, poems, performances, music, dance, art, and more.

You are hereby invited to submit a proposal for a 45-minute session for the Presidential Strand at the annual conference that creatively uses alternative representations, specifically as a means to more fully engage with the values dimensions of our work - the diverse values of stakeholders, values embedded in our evaluation designs, values underlying our evaluative judgments, values related to evaluation's role in society and to our own commitments and ideals.

Please use the following outline for your proposal, and submit directly to me (jcgreene@illinois.edu) as a single file attached to an email, by midnight in the Eastern US Time Zone, Friday, March 18, 2011.

I. Session Title

Please spell out abbreviations and acronyms.

II. Session Abstract

Your abstract should be 150 words or fewer (including any and all references, footnotes, etc.). Include in your abstract the alternative form your presentation will use. Your abstract will be sent to reviewers and read by the public as it is submitted, although it may be truncated if over 150 words.

III. Relevance Statement

Using 500 words or fewer (including any and all references, footnotes, etc.), describe the relevance and importance of your proposal to the field of evaluation and to the values and valuing theme of AEA 2011, including its implications for evaluation theory or practice, and value to the conference audience.

IV. Participants Information

• For each participant, please provide the following information:
• First name:
• Last name:
• Telephone number:
• Email address:
• Affiliation:
• Role: For this special presentation form, what will this person be doing?

If you have any questions regarding this special call for proposals, please do not hesitate to contact me via email at jcgreene@illinois.edu. If you have other questions about the conference, our AEA staff stand ready to assist at info@eval.org or 1-508-748-3326.