Audience
EvaluATE’s primary audience includes project staff, faculty, grants professionals, and evaluators involved with the NSF ATE program. Our work also benefits evaluation educators, the broader evaluation community, and others engaged in planning and implementing evaluations in STEM, higher education, and other diverse contexts.
Vision
EvaluATE envisions an ATE community in which evaluation is valued, systematic, and used to improve the education of technicians in high-tech fields.
Mission
EvaluATE’s mission is to engage the ATE community with information, expertise, and tools to advance high-quality evaluation.
Values
EvaluATE’s work is informed and guided by our commitments to:
Service – We respond to our audience’s needs in ways that are practical, flexible, and context-sensitive.
Co-creation – We are more impactful when we collaborate with others.
People – We center people as their whole selves, build authentic relationships, and embrace compassion.
Equity – We actively acknowledge societal injustices and strive to ensure that all members of our audience can benefit from our work by eliminating or minimizing imbalances as we work towards fairness and justice.
Inclusion – We engage others with openness, appreciation, and humility to foster a sense of belonging.
Diversity – We lift up the voices of people with diverse perspectives, lived experiences, and positionalities.
Quality – We strive to be accurate, practical, and useful in all aspects of our work.
Evaluation Statement
We believe that evaluation is a systematic process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data for the primary purpose of learning and improvement. High-quality evaluation is actionable and equitable. It balances usefulness, feasibility, propriety, accuracy, and accountability (Yarbrough, et a., 2011). Effective evaluations are led by questions, not methods; engage diverse teams; balance questions about process and outcomes; and respond to context and culture.