SRM Evaluation Group
SRM Eval Group: Project Members
Members:
Dr. Marvin Alkin
Founder & Director
3026 Moore Hall
(310) 825-4800
Celina Lee Chao
Celina’s research interests include evaluation capacity building and stakeholder learning. She is also working on a project that examines the effects of different school models on teacher collaboration. Prior to starting at UCLA in 2010, Celina taught middle school Math and Spanish in public, private, and charter schools.
Research Interests:
Evaluation use
Evaluation capacity-building
Organizational learning
Educational Background:
M.A. in Education, 2011 – UCLA
B.A. in Spanish with a minor in Education – 2006 – Wellesley College
Lisa Dillman
Lisa is a doctoral student in the Social Research Methodology division in the Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences at UCLA. She currently works with the SRM Evaluation Group on several evaluation projects including evaluation capacity building activities with the Academic Preparation and Educational Partnership (APEP) at UCLA and the Teacher-Initiated Inquiry Projects program with UCLA’s Center X.
Lisa is Co-Research Director on two Improving Teacher Quality (ITQ) grants with UCLA Center X funded by the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC). Additional research projects include an investigation of how students of program evaluation acquire evaluator competencies, and connecting evaluation theory to practice. She also is the Coordinator of Graduate Student Orientation at UCLA, and she is a member of the Campus Programs Committee Board. Prior to starting at UCLA in 2009, she worked with Bright Horizons Family Solutions as the Assistant Director of a corporate-sponsored back-up child care center in Philadelphia, PA. Additionally, she worked with the Bright Horizons Foundation for Children, developing training programs for shelter staff and volunteers to support educational activities for children living in homeless shelters.
Research Interests:
Evaluator competencies and skill acquisition
Research on evaluation practice
Educational Background:
M.Ed. in Urban Education, 2009 – Temple University, Philadelphia
B.A. in Communication, 2001 – University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Nicole Gerardi
Nicky is an advanced graduate student, studying Social Research Methodology and Program Evaluation in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at UCLA. She is active in the evaluation community, regularly attending and presenting at evaluation conferences and workshops. She participates in all facets of the evaluation process, from design and budgeting to analysis and reporting. She regularly assists clients in writing the research/evaluation component in the response to RFPs. Nicky is also certified in Cognitive Coachingsm , incorporating it into her work with evaluation clients.
Nicky received her Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Liberal & Civic Studies from Saint Mary’s College of California (2002) and her Masters in Education from UCLA (2006). Before joining the doctoral program in 2006, Nicky gained experience teaching, conducting research, and managing projects. From 2007-2009, she served as a Section Co-Editor for the American Journal of Evaluation. Nicky is currently working on two Improving Teacher Quality (ITQ) grants with UCLA Center X, funded by the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC). She is Co-Director of Research for both the UCLA Center X Teacher Initiated Inquiry Project (TIIP) and UCLA Center X Getting the “Core” of the Content: Organizing Learning to Close the Gap. She is also the coordinator of all Center X Evaluations with the SRM Evaluation Group. Nicky’s research interests include: Assessing Teacher Professional Development, Assessing Teacher Effectiveness, Program Design and Development, and Evaluation Capacity Building. Nicky is busy writing up her dissertation: Comparing Depictions of Teachers across Different Measures of Teacher Effectiveness.
Research Interests:
Evaluation capacity building (ECB) within smaller organizations
Organizational learning and change
The intersection of program design and development with evaluation
Evaluating professional development
Cognitive Coachingsm in evaluation
Educational Background:
M.A. in Education, 2006 – UCLA, Los Angeles
B.A. in Economics and Liberal & Civic Studies with a Minor in Philosophy, 2002 – Saint Mary’s College of California, Los Angeles
Candidate for Master of Arts in Spiritual Psychology, University of Transformational Studies and Leadership
Deborah Grodzicki
Deborah Grodzicki is a doctoral student in the Social Research Methodology division in the Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences at UCLA. As a member of the SRM Evaluation Group, she currently works for the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities (CHCFC) on a 5-year evaluation study of Best Start LA, a multi-faceted, placed-based program designed to improve the lives of children and their families in selected Los Angeles communities through a home visiting intervention and community-engagement investments. Her work on the evaluation has included recruitment of low-income mothers, quantitative and qualitative data collection, data analysis, and report writing.
Prior to starting the doctoral program at UCLA in 2010, Deborah received her M.A. in Organizational Behavior and Evaluation from Claremont Graduate University. While studying at Claremont, she assisted with an evaluation of Math in a Basket (MIAB), an innovative math and visual art curriculum. Her evaluation work on this curriculum consisted of focus groups with students and teachers, and qualitative data analysis. Deborah is currently investigating the ways in which evidence-based research can enhance evaluation use. She is particularly interested in the roles of ideology and interest evaluation use. In the coming year, she plans to study how to use research evidence to inform policy and practice.
Research Interests
Research on evaluation practice
Evaluation use
The relationship between evaluation theory and practice
Educational Background:
M.A. in Organizational Behavior and Evaluation, 2010 – Claremont Graduate University
B.A. in Psychology, 2005 – University of Rochester
Jennifer Ho
Jennifer is a doctoral student in the Social Research Methodology division in the Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences at UCLA. Her work with the SRM Evaluation Group includes the conduct of both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analyses in the evaluation of California State’s Mental Health Services Act (MHSA). Additionally, since her start at UCLA in 2012, she has completed research on the effectiveness of teacher professional development programming in Indonesia, examined the construction of survey instruments measuring physically and emotionally safe environments for children in California, and has composed an ethnographic study on the sub-culture of gourmet food trucks in Los Angeles.
Jennifer received her M.Ed. in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2005. Following her work in education in China, California, and Thailand, she continued on in the field of educational development as an International Technical Associate for Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) in Washington DC. Her evaluation work in developing countries has covered programming in the improvement of primary school learning environments, teacher professional development, student testing and assessment, technology and education, Interactive Audio Instruction, distance learning, early childhood learning, and primary-level reading.
Research Interests:
Evaluation in developing country contexts
Communicating evaluative findings with stakeholders
Research on evaluation practice
Educational Background:
M.Ed. in International Education Policy, 2005 – Harvard University, Cambridge
B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy, 2002 – Boston University, Boston
Tim Ho
Tim is also a doctoral student at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences with an emphasis in Social Research Methodology. He has worked on evaluation projects since 2006, assisting on several local and large scale evaluation projects. Tim has worked on evaluations for projects funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Science Foundation, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the US Department of Education, the California Department of Mental Health, and First 5 LA among many others. Prior to enrollment into the UCLA program in 2008, Tim worked as a data manager and research associate at EMT Associates, an evaluation consulting firm, where he learned how to conduct evaluations and honed his craft for managing very large data sets.
Currently, Tim is working on his dissertation, focusing on the metacognitive and decision making processes used by quantitative researchers during the course of data analysis. Tim is also currently serving as a teaching assistant for the introductory sequence of statistics courses in the Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences, a role that he enjoys very much.
Research Interests:
Statistical Modeling
Causal Inference and Philosophy of Science
Evaluation and Public Policy
Educational Background:
M.A. in Education, 2009 – UCLA
B.A. in Psychology, 2004 – Cal Poly Pomona
Alejandra Priede-Schubert
Alejandra is a doctoral student in the Social Research Methodology division in the Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences at UCLA. She received a B.A. in Economics from Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM), in Mexico.
She worked at the Los Angeles Education Research Institute (LAERI), an organization that aims to improve Los Angeles County students’ educational outcomes. She also worked at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST) on the Powersource project, which purpose was to determine the effectiveness of a formative assessment strategy based on the learning of fundamental mathematical principles intended to support mastery of algebra.
Before entering the PhD program in 2009, Alejandra worked at a consulting firm in Mexico that specializes in program evaluation, where she served Federal agencies and a variety of Non-Profit Organizations.
Research Interests:
Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods
Program Evaluation
Education policy
Topics related to inequality, poverty, and social mobility
Educational Background:
M.A. in Education, 2010 – UCLA, Los Angeles
B.A. in Economics, 2007 – ITAM, Mexico City
Patricia Quinones
Patty is a third year graduate student, studying Social Research Methodology and Program Evaluation in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at UCLA. She currently works with Dr. Christie on several evaluation projects including evaluating the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA), two first year experience pathways at Pasadena City College (PCC), as well as a formative evaluation for a math curriculum redesign project at PCC.
Patty works as the data analyst on the MHSA project, in which the team is currently evaluating prioritized performance indicators designed to measure the impact of the Mental Health Services Act at individual (consumer) and system levels. In addition, Dr. Christie and Patty are evaluating two first year experience pathways over the course of three years at PCC. First year experience pathways are designed to help first-year students progress through the developmental Math and English course sequence by providing guaranteed enrollment in Math and English classes, as well as providing various other resources and institutional support for successful completion of these courses. Patty’s current research projects include: creating and validating a student engagement scale, and will soon begin work on the applicability of structural equation models for testing program theory.
Research Interests:
Testing program theory using structural equation modeling techniques
Educational background:
M.A. in General/Experimental Psychology, 2009 – Cal State San Bernardino
B.A. in Psychology, 2004 – Cal State Fullerton
Anne Vo
Anne is a doctoral candidate studying Program Evaluation in the Social Research Methodology Division in the Graduate School of Education at UCLA. She is currently engaged in evaluation capacity building activities with the Academic Preparation and Educational Partnership (APEP) and their 36 individual projects as well as with the University of California Educational Evaluation Center (UCEC) and its 6 affiliated UC campuses. Her evaluation experience spans the spectrum of working with small educational access/outreach programs such as the Summer Humanities Institute run by the UCLA Bunche Center for African-American Studies to large-scale projects based in urban school settings including Long Beach and Los Angeles Unified School Districts.
In addition to her applied work, Anne is actively engaged in scholarly endeavors related to evaluation and education. She has served as reviewer for various high-ranking journals and professional conferences such as the American Journal of Evaluation (AJE), the American Evaluation Association, and the American Educational Research Association.
Anne is currently Co-Editor of the AJE’s section on Teaching Evaluation and Co-Director of the Southern California Evaluation Association (SCEA).
Anne’s dissertation, a Delphi study, seeks to clarify the ways in which evaluative thinking is conceptualized and defined within the evaluation field using input from 28 evaluation experts. Other research projects include: a meta-analysis of evaluation use; an examination of practices used to teach evaluation in informal settings through a conversation analytic lens; and a politico-historical analysis of American evaluation practice.
Research Interests:
Research on program evaluation practice & theory
Comparative evaluation theory
Teaching evaluation
Educational Background:
M.A. in Education, 2008 – UCLA, Los Angeles
B.A. in Psychology & English – 2005 – UCLA