Board of Advisors
Angela Arzubiaga
Angela Arzubiaga is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She has been a recipient of the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship and an International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development (ISSBD) award. Her research focuses on eco-cultural and sociocultural perspectives on family life and home-institution connections, comparative understandings of difference, the education of children of immigrants, and immigrant families’ adaptations. Dr. Arzubiaga’s work emphasizes the importance of culture within all human practices; she argues culture mediates and is the mediator. In an article for Exceptional Children, she contends the cultural presuppositions in a field’s habitual practices as well as the sociocultural location of the researcher need to inform our research. Her review of research on children in immigrant families in Review of Research in Education is leading current research on the contested issues of diversity and difference surrounding the education of children. She has been a Spencer and Bernard Van Leer investigator on the Children of Immigrants in US Preschool: Parent and Teacher Perspectives and the Children Crossing Borders (CCB) studies. CCB is a five country effort focused on understanding the intersections of immigration and the education of preschool children. She received her PhD from The University of California at Los Angeles.
Pauline E. Brooks
Pauline Brooks is a Los Angeles based evaluation, research and program consultant. She works with community organizations, public and private foundations, educational- and other institutions and systems. She has designed and conducted monitoring, evaluation and research in collaboration with diverse communities, and participated on CDC’s REACH 2010 national evaluation panel looking at health disparities. She has been a team member on evaluations in Ethiopia, South Africa, Kenya, Burkina Faso and Surinam. A former Manager of Evaluation for a large California-based health foundation, and former university researcher and professor, she has particular interest in health and well-being, intercultural issues, underserved populations, and societal equity challenges including racism. Pauline completed a doctorate and post-doc at UCLA, and was formally trained at the Center for the Study of Evaluation, later serving as an Evaluation Project Director. Over the past two decades she has conducted evaluation trainings for projects from a wide range of backgrounds. She has presented original evaluation and research work at conferences in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Germany, South Africa, Jamaica, Italy and Sweden. Pauline also studies and teaches Tai Chi and Qi Gong under the tutelage of Master Nzazi Malonga (Master Zi) for health and overall well-being, and sometimes does Tai Chi work with physical therapy patients at Stay Ready Physical Therapy in Los Angeles.
Jennifer Greene
Jennifer Greene is one of the thought leaders and forerunners in the field of program evaluation. Her compassion, thoughtfulness, and leadership have led her to receiving various awards and honors, including the R. Stewart Jones Award for the Outstanding Teacher in Educational Psychology and the Distinguished Senior Scholar Award, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award for Outstanding Contributions to Evaluation Theory from the American Evaluation Association (AEA). She is also the past President of AEA (2011). Dr. Greene has published extensively in the field of evaluation. Her work has spurred alternative forms of evaluation, including mixed methods and democratic evaluations, and honed the focus of the field on issues of equity and social justice in evaluation. She is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Greene received her PhD from in Educational Psychology and Masters in Education from Stanford University.
Rodney Hopson
Rodney K. Hopson is a multifaceted leader in the field of evaluation, making significant contributions in various areas including developing pipelines and pathways of emerging scholars and practitioners from underrepresented groups in the field of evaluation and the greater consideration of cultural responsiveness. As one of the authors of the recently published program evaluation standards (3rd edition), he continually deliberates ways to better apply ethical standards and issues in evaluation. His work was recognized in his receipt of the American Evaluation Association’s (AEA) Robert Ingle Award for Outstanding Service and his position is the current President AEA. He was integral in founding AEA’s Graduate Education Diversity Internship Program and the Robert Wood Johnson Evaluation Fellowship Program. Dr. Hopson is Hillman Distinguished Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership and faculty member in the Center for Interpretive and Qualitative Research at Duquesne University. He completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in English Literature, Educational Evaluation, and Linguistics from the University of Virginia and has had postdoctoral/sabbatical opportunities at Johns Hopkins University (Bloomberg School of Public Health), the University of Namibia, and Cambridge University (Centre of African Studies).
Karen Kirkhart
Karen E. Kirkhart is one of the leaders and excellent educators in the fields of evaluation, social work, and psychology. Her leadership, kindness, and supportiveness have been conducive to her receipt of various evaluation, education, and service awards, including Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award for Outstanding Contribution to Evaluation Theory, Robert Ingle Service Award, and Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year in the School of Social Work at Syracuse University. She was President of AEA in 1994 and has published various articles and edited books adding significant contributions to the field of evaluation. She is currently a Professor in the College of Human Ecology, School of Social Work at Syracuse University. Dr. Kirkhart obtained her PhD and Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan.
Khawla Obeidat
Khawla Obeidat is an excellent methodologist. Her hard work, persistence, and compassion have led her to be a sought-after professor. After graduation from the Measurement, Statistics, and Methodological Studies Department at Arizona State University, Dr. Obeidat spent two years as a research fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill working on longitudinal and multilevel growth modeling, specifically disaggregating within and between variability in multilevel modeling and its application to substance use. She is currently an Assistant Professor at University of Colorado. Her research is focused on teacher effectiveness and cultural competence. Dr. Obeidat obtained her PhD in Educational Psychology at Arizona State University, her Masters in Educational Psychology and Speech Language Pathology from the University of Jordan.
