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Diversity - AEA Partners with CREA at Evaluation 2015
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From Zachary Grays, AEA Headquarters
The American Evaluation Association (AEA) is proud to announce our upcoming partnership with the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) to offer a unique thread of professional development training options as part of the pre- and post-conference offerings during Evaluation 2015, November 9-14, 2015, in Chicago. CREA was established in 2011 in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with Stafford Hood, Ph.D., Sheila M. Miller professor, serving as its founding director. CREA is a culturally diverse and interdisciplinary global community of researchers and practitioners in the areas of (but not limited to) evaluation and assessment. CREA's primary focus is to address the growing need for policy-relevant efforts that take seriously the influences of cultural norms, practices, and expectations in the design, implementation, and evaluation of social and educational interventions. CREA is the only university-based evaluation and assessment research center with a primary focus on the centrality of culture and cultural context in this work. A core group of longstanding AEA members comprise the founding and active members of the CREA community.
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Potent Presentations Initiative - It's Design Time and Help is Here!
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From Sheila B. Robinson, Potent Presentations Initiative Coordinator
Hello, Presentation Designers! You've just received that acceptance notice for your conference presentation (whether it's Evaluation 2015 or any other event) and it's time to start designing. Your content is all set. Your paper is written, the evaluation project is complete, or you've decided on content for your workshop. You've even carefully crafted your message, a key component of a successful presentation.
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International Policy Update - Tom Schwandt to Help Promote Evaluation of the New Sustainable Development Goals
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From Mike Hendricks, AEA Representative to the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation (IOCE), with contributions from Jim Rugh, EvalPartners Co-Coordinator
We are very excited that one of AEA's most senior leaders, Dr. Thomas A. Schwandt, will be representing AEA on the core group of the just-beginning EvalPartners initiative EvalSDG. The letters "SDG" stand for Sustainable Development Goals, a set of 17 world-wide goals the U.N. is expected to approve in September to replace the expiring Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Although the MDGs did focus on specific indicators of various aspects of poverty, there wasn't enough evaluation done to document the reasons for progress or to learn lessons on the process. To improve this situation, EvalSDG will be promoting a much stronger emphasis on evaluation in the design, implementation, and use of the upcoming SDGs. EvalPartners is developing EvalSDG in partnership with the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG), which is co-chairing the initiative. (See here for more information.)
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Important International Partnership Program Deadlines
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The AEA International Partnership Program offers the opportunity for the American Evaluation Association (AEA), by means of its executive director, in collaboration with the International Working Group (IWG) and Cross-Cultural Topical Interest Group (ICCE TIG), to support the strengthening of peer Voluntary Organizations for Professional Evaluation (VOPEs) through mutually beneficial partnerships.
To take advantage of this program, your organization would need to submit an application. AEA funds a certain portion of the direct expenses to supplement the activities. (Please note: This is not a grant program. Instead, AEA pays a portion of the direct costs of participation.) The deadlines for applications are July 31, November 30, and March 31. Funds can also be used to supplement recipients of the following EvalPartner small grant programs: Small Grants proposals
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AEA's Representative Made Co-Chair of Global EvalYouth Effort
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 In a wonderful piece of developing news, Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead, AEA's recently appointed representative to EvalPartners' new initiative EvalYouth (see our June newsletter), has just been invited to co-chair the entire global effort. She also becomes a member of the overall EvalPartners Management Group. These are tremendous compliments to Bianca for her immediate, impressive work and also a terrific opportunity for AEA to contribute to EvalYouth at the highest possible level. Congratulations, Bianca!
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eLearning Update - Discover eStudy Courses
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Our eStudy program is made up of in-depth virtual professional development courses. Below are upcoming eStudy offerings:
From A to R: An Introduction to R and Reproducible Analysis
August 18 & 20
2:00 - 3:30 p.m. ET
Read more and register
R is often described as the data analyst's Swiss army knife. Whatever the data challenge you are facing, R almost certainly has the tools to address it! Because it does so many things, getting started with R may seem overwhelming at first. The objective of this project-based webinar is to smoothe this starting phase:
By the end of this three-hour workshop, you will have created your first analytic report with R!
Together, we will complete a simple, but very concrete data analysis project. In the process, and following the data analysis workflow, you will learn:
- How to navigate Rstudio (a user-friendly interface for R)
- How to load data into R
- How to conduct basic data manipulation
- How to generate summary statistics
- How to generate basic plots
- How to publish your results in one click
Finally, attendees will have the opportunity to exercise their new skills through practical applications and hands-on activities.
Analyzing Evaluation Data in Excel
August 10 & 17
2:00 - 3:00 p.m. ET
Ever feel like you're swimming upstream in data? Need to make sense of spreadsheets, but aren't sure where to start? Have a gut feeling that you're not getting the most out of common software programs like Microsoft Excel? Ann K. Emery will guide you through the entire data analysis process: importing and merging multiple datasets together to build a master dataset that can be used for analyses; assessing missing data and removing duplicate entries; recoding and transforming variables; exploring preliminary patterns through spark lines and conditional formatting; running descriptive statistics and frequencies; performing inferential statistics (and guidance for using Excel plug-ins or other software programs for these analyses); saving time and energy with pivot tables; and dealing with names, dates, and text fields. We'll utilize a variety of sample spreadsheets, such as survey data, outcome data, demographic data, and more. This webinar is highly interactive; the instructor will demonstrate a skill and give you opportunities to practice immediately.
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New Jobs & RFPs from AEA's Career Center
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Senior Technical Assistance and Evaluation Advisor at EnCompass LLC (Rockville, Maryland)
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Evaluation of Health Foundation at Potomac Health Foundation (Woodbridge, Virginia)
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Financial Inclusion Data Scientist at The Center for Effective Global Action (Berkeley, California)
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Data Manager at Latin American Association (Atlanta, Georgia)
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Senior Researcher at Institute for Learning Innovation (Portland, Oregon)
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Director for Evaluation at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (Baltimore, Maryland)
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Evaluation Program Manager at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (Winston-Salem, North Carolina)
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Associate Coordinator at Education Development Center (Waltham, Massachusetts)
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K-12 Evaluator at SageFox Consulting Group (Atlanta, Georgia)
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Sr. Research Program Coordinator at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland)
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| About Us | |
AEA is an international professional association of evaluators devoted to the application and exploration of evaluation in all its forms.
The association's mission is to:
- Improve evaluation practices and methods.
- Increase evaluation use.
- Promote evaluation as a profession.
- Support the contribution of evaluation to the generation of theory and knowledge about effective human action.
phone: 1-202-367-1166 or 1-888-232-2275 (U.S. and Canada only)
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| Welcome, New AEA Members! |
Click here to view a list of AEA's newest members.
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