About our authors
Jody Fitzpatrick is an emeritus faculty member in public administration at the University of Colorado Denver, where she taught research methods and evaluation. She has conducted evaluations in many schools and human service settings and written extensively about successful evaluation practice. She served on the board and as president of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) and on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Evaluation and New Directions for Evaluation. She also chaired AEA's Teaching of Evaluation topical interest group and won a teaching award at the University of Colorado Denver. In her book, Evaluation in Action: Interviews with Expert Evaluators, she used interviews with expert evaluators to talk about the decisions that evaluators face as they plan and conduct evaluations and the factors that influence their choices. She evaluated the changing roles of counselors in middle schools and high schools and a program to help immigrant middle-school girls to achieve and stay in school. Her international work includes research on evaluation in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, and she has spoken on evaluation issues to policymakers and evaluators in France, Spain, Denmark, Mexico, and Chile.
James Sanders is professor emeritus of educational studies and former associate director of The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University, where he taught, published, consulted, and conducted evaluations. A graduate of Bucknell University and the University of Colorado, he served on the board and as president of the American Evaluation Association (AEA). He chaired the steering committee that created the Evaluation Network, a predecessor to AEA. His publications include books on school, student, and program evaluation. He has worked extensively with schools, foundations, and government and nonprofit agencies to develop their evaluation practices. As chair of the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, he led the development of the second edition of the Program Evaluation Standards. He was also involved in developing the concepts of applied performance testing for student assessments, cluster evaluation for program evaluations by foundations and government agencies, and mainstreaming evaluation for organizational development. His international work in evaluation concentrated in Canada, Europe, and Latin America. He received distinguished service awards from Western Michigan University, where he helped establish a Ph.D. program in evaluation, and from the Michigan Association for Evaluation.
Blaine Worthen is psychology professor emeritus at Utah State University, where he founded and directed the evaluation methodology Ph.D. program and the Western Institute for Research and Evaluation, conducting more than 350 evaluations for local and national clients in the United States and Canada. He received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. He is a former editor of Evaluation Practice and founding editor of the American Journal of Evaluation. He served on the American Evaluation Association (AEA) board of directors and received AEA's Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Evaluation Practice Award and the American Education Research Association's Best Evaluation Study Award. He taught university evaluation courses for three decades, managed federally mandated evaluations in 17 states, advised numerous government and private agencies, and has given more than 150 keynote addresses and evaluation workshops in the United States, England, Australia, Israel, Greece, Ecuador, and other countries. He has written extensively on evaluation, measurement and assessment and is the author of 135 articles and six books. His Phi Delta Kappan article, "Critical Issues That Will Determine the Future of Alternative Assessment," was distributed to 500 distinguished invitees at the White House’s Goals 2000 conference. He is recognized as a national and international leader in the field.
Lori Wingate is the executive director of The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University (WMU), where she has worked since 1997. She has a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary evaluation from WMU and has been working in the field of program evaluation since 1993. From 2009 to 2019, she directed EvaluATE, the evaluation hub for the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education program. From 2011 to 2019, she served as a subject matter expert in evaluation for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She has led more than 75 webinars and workshops on evaluation in various contexts, including CDC University, American Evaluation Association Summer Evaluation Institute, and EvaluATE. She leads the Evaluation Checklist Project at WMU and has developed numerous resource materials to support evaluation practice, including checklists, templates, and guides. She has written book chapters on evaluating humanitarian response to emergencies, evaluation checklists, and metaevaluation. She was the book review section editor for the American Journal of Evaluation from 2005 to 2011 and has led a range of evaluation projects in the areas of STEM education, public health, and higher education.
