FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Kevin Hurley, khurley@eval.org, 202-367-1166

AEA ANNOUNCES 2014 AWARD WINNERS

Recognition ceremony scheduled Friday, Oct. 17 at Evaluation 2014 in Denver, CO

Denver, CO (date going out) – The American Evaluation Association  (AEA) will honor four individuals for their outstanding work over the past year at its annual awards luncheon to be held on Friday, Oct. 17, 12:00-1:30 p.m. MT, in conjunction with its Evaluation 2014 conference in Denver, CO. AEA is an international professional association that comprises more than 7,300 members worldwide. Honored this year will be recipients in five categories who have been involved with cutting-edge evaluation and research initiatives that have influenced  citizens around the world.

"AEA awards annually recognize a few of our many outstanding members," notes AEA's President, Beverly Parsons.  "These deserving awardees have demonstrated wise use of theory and practice and dedicated service to the field, discipline, and association.  It is a pleasure to recognize both new and long-time members nationally and internationally."

Join us in congratulating the recipients of AEA's 2014 awards:

Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Connecticut

2014 Marcia Guttentag Promising New Evaluator Award

Since 2013,  Montrosse-Moorhead has been an assistant professor in the Measurement, Evaluation, and Assessment program at the University of Connecticut. At the university, she also serves as the program coordinator for the Graduate Certificate Program in Program Evaluation and a research scientist with the newly formed cross-departmental Collaborative on Strategic Education Reform. Motivated by a desire to bridge gaps between the academic and practical domains of Evaluation and to contribute evaluative knowledge that promotes program and policy reform, her scholarship is guided by three primary goals: (i) to develop stronger evidence-based evaluation practices, models, and theories; (ii) to advance valid and actionable evaluative knowledge to the policy community; and (iii) to examine the inputs, process, and impact of preK-12 policies, practices, and programs designed to promote social betterment and educational equity.  Montrosse-Moorhead received her Ph.D. in Psychology with a concentration in Evaluation and Applied Research Methods from Claremont Graduate University in 2009.

"Without agenda, I give a lot of myself to the discipline and practice of Evaluation; and so personally, I am unbelievably humbled and honored to be the recipient of this year's AEA Marcia Guttentag Promising New Evaluator Award.", says Montrosse-Moorhead "I believe this award reflects both my past and promise as an evaluation scholar and practitioner, as well as my unwavering commitment to the field through my service to AEA."

Veronica M. Olazabal, Director of Monitoring & Evaluation, Nuru International

2014 Alva and Gunnar Myrdal  Evaluation Practice Award

Olazabal, currently Director of Monitoring and Evaluation at Nuru International, an organization seeking to end extreme poverty in remote, rural areas, is an evaluation professional with more than 15 years of program and research management experience. She is strategic and results-driven, but also practical and realistic, striving to balance her experience using both quantitative and qualitative data with the constraints and complexities of the world. Her professional portfolio spans four continents and includes working with the MasterCard and Rockefeller Foundations international programs on topics ranging from youth learning and financial inclusion through to climate change and global health. She has also led the evaluation and research efforts of humanitarian relief and non-profit organizations such as UMCOR (The United Methodists Committee on Relief) and the Food Bank for New York City. A strong believer in the systematic role evaluation can play in addressing global poverty she has Co-Chaired InterAction's (the largest U.S. network of international NGOs) Working Group for Evaluation and Program Effectiveness and represented civil society as the North American Representative for the ACT Alliance at the United Nations Fourth High Level Forum on Development Effectiveness. With graduate study on both sides of the mixed methods world, she holds a Masters in Urban Policy and Planning (with an applied economics focus) from Rutgers University, is acquiring her M.A. in Anthropology from Columbia University and holds a B.A. in Communications focused on international agricultural and environmental studies.

Olazabal explains, "Being recognized for my beliefs that evaluation can be a force for pro-poor systematic change is very exciting. Yet, more than excited, I am overwhelmingly humbled knowing that my efforts as an evaluation practitioner has been shaped by the teachings of all my colleagues and mentors throughout the developed and developing world. This award not only speaks to me, but also speaks to the result of their hard work and efforts, for that I am very grateful."

Bob Williams, Evaluation Consultant

2014 Paul F. Lazarsfeld Evaluation Theory Award

Williams is known internationally in various fields including systems, evaluation and action research.  Williams specializes in the evaluation of complex and "difficult" projects and programs.  His focus is on evaluation approaches that are robust and rigorous whilst at the same time produces information and analysis that are "good enough" for organizations that have to use the information to take real decisions in real timeframes.  Consequently he has a particular interest and expertise in evaluation designs and processes that educate, inform, promote use and develop evaluation capacity and program development. He is also a member of the Editorial Boards of three of the leading evaluation journals - the American Journal of Evaluation, Evaluation and Program Planning and New Directions in Evaluation.  He has led the redevelopment and relaunching of the Evaluation Journal of Australasia and co-edited Evaluation – South Asiar.  This prototype journal was deliberately aimed at bringing radical evaluation ideas into the South Asia scene and to promote to a wider audience radical ideas developed within the region.

"This is the most tremendous honour.  Not only for me, but it also honour the many colleagues who have contributed to the use of systems and complexity ideas in evaluation.  It shows how open the evaluation field is to ideas beyond applied social science."

David Fetterman, Ph.D., President & CEO of Fetterman & Associates

2014 AEA Evaluation Advocacy and Use  Award

Fetterman is President  & CEO of Fetterman & Associates, an international evaluation consulting firm.  Concurrently, he is a professor in the School of Business at The Charleston University and a professor of anthropology at San Jose State University.

Fetterman received his Ph.D. from Stanford University.   He has 25 years of experience at Stanford University.  Fetterman was the Director of Evaluation and the head of the Division of Evaluation in the School of Medicine at Stanford University.   Previous to this position, he was the Director of Evaluation, Career Development, and Alumni Relations and a Consulting Professor of Education in the School of Education.  For a decade he was the Director of the MA Policy Analysis and Evaluation Program in the School of Education.  Previous to that position, he served in the senior administration at Stanford University.  He introduced empowerment evaluation to the field during his tenure as president of the American Evaluation Association.  Since that time empowerment evaluations have been conducted in over 15 countries including:  Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Finland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Fetterman is one of two recipients to have received both the AEA Lazarsfield Award for contributions to evaluation theory and the Myrdal Award for contributions to evaluation practice.  He is also a recipient of the American Educational Research Association's Distinguished Scholar Award for Research on Evaluation.

"The American Evaluation Association has been my professional home for a very long time. It has been my privilege to serve as a past-president and an honor to have been a recipient of awards for contributions to both theory and practice.  This award is particularly important to me.  It symbolizes my commitment to evaluation use and recognizes the efforts of so many of my colleagues to make evaluation as fundamental to the public as reading, writing, and arithmetic (never mind html).", said Fetterman. "On behalf of so many of my colleagues and friends, what others have called an international 'movement', I graciously and proudly accept this award."

AEA congratulates all of the 2014 award winners. We look forward to celebrating with you at Evaluation 2014. To learn more about the AEA awards visit www.eval.org.

About AEA

The American Evaluation Association is an international professional association and the largest in its field. Evaluation involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses of programs, policies, personnel, products and organizations to improve their effectiveness. AEA's mission is to improve evaluation practices and methods worldwide, to increase evaluation use, promote evaluation as a profession and support the contribution of evaluation to the generation of theory and knowledge about effective human action. For more information about AEA, visit www.eval.org.

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