Letter from the Executive Director
As I reflect on the 2023-24 fiscal year, it is with pride and gratitude that I share some of The Evaluation Center’s accomplishments and milestones. September 1, 2023, marked the center’s 50th anniversary at Western Michigan University, celebrating half a century of leading the evaluation field from our home in Kalamazoo (following eight years at Ohio State University). Our 50th year of operation at WMU coincided with multiple standout achievements:
- Securing $7 million in federal grants, contributing to over $18 million in the past five years.
- Opening the Evaluation Lab, an innovative initiative to serve the Kalamazoo community while providing hands-on training to WMU students.
- Launching Valeo, an online self-paced learning program designed to address a critical gap in online education about evaluation.
- Being honored with the Michigan Association for Evaluation’s Friend of Evaluation award.
We’re thrilled with these accomplishments. We’re just as proud of our decades-long track record of providing evaluation guidance, insights, and engagement opportunities through the Evaluation Checklists Project, Evaluation Cafe, Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, and EvaluATE, all of which remain open-access.
None of this would be possible without the trust of our clients and sponsors and support from the WMU Office of Research and Innovation, which we are proud to call home. We’re excited for what the next 50 years at WMU may bring. Go Broncos!
This 2023-24 annual report highlights our activities to serve and engage fellow evaluators and advance evaluation scholarship and practice, our externally funded projects, and the staff who made it all possible.
Warm regards,
Lori A. Wingate, Ph.D.
Executive Director
The Evaluation Center