This project, funded by the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education, aims to increase the number of graduate-level and fully credentialed teachers of students with visual impairments (TVI). It provides scholarships for a two-year program with experiences in the field. Ian Hunter and I have led the evaluation efforts since the beginning of activities in 2026.
The Climate Change Initiative (CCI) is a University Research Center that informs and supports evidence-based climate action through research, education, and outreach with the goal of fostering a transition to a sustainable, resilient, and equitable society. I have been working with the team since 2011, and our projects have focused on researching the impact of using climate simulation scenarios with people across different sectors of society, from middle school students to national policymakers, in terms of their understanding of, attitudes toward, and actions around climate change. Our most recent collaboration was with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the Climate Pathways Project, the second link below.
https://www.uml.edu/research/climate-change/
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/sustainability-initiative/climate-pathways-project
DCMP, which is based in Spartanburg, South Carolina, provides both captioning and description services for K-12 educational media and a platform whereby they can be accessed by schools, teachers, and students. I am part of the evaluation team looking to measure the effectiveness of their efforts in enhancing the educational environment for students with sensory disabilities, and worked on this project, along with my partners at SageFox, from 2021 through 2026.
This Northeastern University-based alliance, which just started in the fall of 2021 and ran through the spring of 2025, was dedicated to developing the infrastructure needed to support sustainability and scale-up of successful interventions that increase the participation of women and underrepresented minority students in engineering. I was the external evaluator of this project along with my partner, Ami Slater.
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The Michigan Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (MI-LSAMP) was an alliance of six postsecondary institutions in Michigan, University of Michigan, Mott Community College, Michigan State University, Washtenaw Community College, Wayne State University, and Western Michigan University, that work together to enhance educational opportunities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) for underrepresented minority students. Key supports include summer bridge programs and research experiences. I started as the evaluator of this project in the fall of 2021, along with my partners Dominique Graham and David Bell, and the project ran through the spring of 2025. Further information about the project evaluation can be found here.
This consortium, funded by the Office of Special Education Programs within the U.S. Department of Education, is a community dedicated to funding and supporting the next generation of doctoral-level leaders in the education of students with sensory disabilities (blindness and visual impairment, deafness and hardness of hearing, and deafblindness). The consortium includes the doctoral students, university faculty from all sensory disability education programs in the country, and a Public Advisory Committee consisting of representatives from national advocacy and support organizations. I was part of the evaluation team throughout the course of the project, which ran from 2016 to 2021.
The Newark Geoscience Ecosystem (NewGeo) is a transformative learning geo-ecosystem model uniting Newark-based institutions and organizations in the growth of a geoscience workforce prepared to solve urban environmental challenges through cross-sectoral collaboration. It brings together graduate students, faculty members, and community organizations to provide a unique educational and research environment focused on community impacts. Brad Wheeler and I started as the evaluators of this project upon its inception in 2023, with Ian Hunter coming on in 2026.
Together, the National Science Foundation-funded Garden State Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (GS-LSAMP) and the Northern New Jersey Bridges to the Baccalaureate (NNJ-B2B) programs are a large alliance of postsecondary institutions in New Jersey comprised of four community colleges (Bergen County College, County College of Morris, Hudson County Community College, and Passaic County Community College) and seven universities (Fairleigh Dickinson University, Kean University, Montclair State University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Rutgers University – New Brunswick, Rutgers University – Newark, and William Paterson University) that work closely together to enhance educational opportunities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) for underrepresented minority students. Key supports include research experiences and conferences, cross-campus peer mentoring to assist with transfer from the two- to four-year college, interactions with underrepresented minority scientists who act as role models, advising, and academic and social support. In addition, in 2018, an S-STEM award from the National Science Foundation expanded the program to provide scholarships to students in Essex, Hudson, and Passaic to support their transition to the four-year school, with additional support available if they transfer to Rutgers – Newark. I have been a member of the evaluation and research teams for these projects since 2015. S-STEM came to an end in 2023 and the GS-LSAMP alliance came to an end in the spring of 2025, but NNJ-B2B is still ongoing.
The PCCC Urban Climate Change Initiative is designed to strengthen PCCC’s research capacity around environmental sustainability through course development, instructor professional development, and internships with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I led the evaluation of the project from its inception in 2024 along with Brad Wheeler, with Ian Hunter coming on board in 2026, the final year of funding.
Over the years in which I have worked with the Peabody (since 2004), they have sponsored a number of educational initiatives, from placing Yale graduate students in local K-12 schools to provide scientific expertise to teachers to offering professional development to K-12 teachers. I supported the EVOLUTIONS afterschool program, which provides weekly science classes, monthly events, museum jobs, and research internships to high school students, helping support their paths to college and beyond, for many years, up through 2025, when evaluation funding came to an end.
This project, funded by the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education, aims to increase the number of graduate-level and fully credentialed teachers of students with visual impairments (TVI) and Board Certified Behavior Analysts® (BCBA®) who have been trained interdisciplinarily to work with students with high-intensity needs, including students with visual impairments and deafblindness. It provides scholarships for a two-year program with experiences in the field. I have been part of the evaluation team since its inception in 2020. The project came to an end in 2025.
SageFox is an independent educational evaluation and consulting firm located in Amherst, Massachusetts. I worked for SageFox for 11 years, from its inception in 2008 (and before that in its previous incarnation as Peterfreund Associates starting in 2003) through 2019, when I left to form REER. I have continued to partner with the team at SageFox on a number of projects, particularly those through San Francisco State University, the Northern New Jersey STEM Alliances, the Described and Captioned Media Program, and the University of Alabama Huntsville.
Shoreline-West STEMConnect is a LSAMP (Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation) alliance of three community colleges in southern Connecticut, Gateway Community College, Housatonic Community College, and Norwalk Community College. Their goal is to provide supports to help foster the success of underrepresented minority students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), both in terms of graduation and transfer to four-year schools. I started as the evaluator with its inception in 2023, along with my partner Brad Wheeler, and the evaluation lasted until the end of the program in spring 2025.
For over 20 years, the SEO programs at SFSU have been preparing students from underrepresented groups for advanced biomedical degrees by providing financial support, academic support and stimulating research experiences. Funding for these programs has come from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Genentech Foundation, among others, providing support for over 150 students annually, ranging from their first year in college through graduate school. I have been involved in evaluation and research in support of SEO since 2002.
The Springfield Museums are a collection of five museums in Springfield Massachusetts that house exhibits in art, history, and science. I and my colleague Jeffrey Xavier worked with them to evaluate select exhibits and educational outreach activities from 2018 to 2020.
The Tropical Resources Institute is a project with Yale University and Lewis & Clark College offering students in-person opportunities to study the ecology of the lowland rain forest of Yasuni National Park, Ecuador. I helped evaluate the effects of the experience on the participants, starting in 2022 through the projct’s end in 2024.
In this project, which began in 2023, I have been working with the Art History department at UMass Amherst to examine the impacts of their computer-based modules on student learning.