Dear Colleagues, Thank you for joining us for our first annual Evaluating Better Together conference. In this effort, we seek to build authentic relationships between evaluators across Colorado through a series of sessions fostering dialogue, networking, and mentoring. The conference will provide a shared, safe space to examine challenges and lessons learned from past and ongoing evaluations. Presenters will share original work, gather feedback from a broad audience, and consider how best to translate evaluation theory into everyday practice. In 2018, we will also consider the state of evaluation in the region, reflecting on the anticipated evaluation workforce needs and the preparation of aspiring evaluators to meet those needs. Organized by faculty and advanced graduate students in the Research Methods and Statistics Program (RMS) at the University of Denver (DU), Evaluating Better Together is sponsored by the Organization for Program Evaluation in Colorado (OPEC), the Morgridge College of Education (MCE), and the Research, Evaluation, and Assessment Collaboratory Hub (REACH). Through this conference, we hope to continue OPEC’s meaningful and long-standing tradition of regional community-building through annual meetings at Peaceful Valley Lodge. Our steering committee first met in September 2017 to brainstorm how RMS graduate students might carry on this strong tradition while also helping young and aspiring evaluators to become familiar with our professional community. This conference is a result of those conversations. Evaluating Better Together joins a growing assembly of national university-led, regional evaluation conferences, including: the Edward F. Kelly Evaluation Conference (held in Canada and upstate New York from 1990-2014), the Emergent Voices in Evaluation Conference (held in Greensboro, North Carolina, from 2017-present), and the DC Consortium Student Conference on Evaluation and Policy (SCEP, held in the District of Columbia from 2017-present). This event would not be possible without the generous efforts of our community, specifically our planning committee chairs: Debbie Gowensmith, Megan Kauffmann, and Jessica Morganfield. We are grateful to our steering committee members for their commitment to developing this conference: Carsten Baumann (OPEC), Antonio Olmos (RMS), and Yvonne Kellar-Guenther (CO School of Public Health). We are equally thankful for the organizations who contributed financial support for this inaugural effort. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the Morgridge College of Education, including Dean Karen Riley and Associate Dean Mark Engberg, for their support in providing a meeting space for the conference in Katherine A. Ruffatto Hall. We are happy that you can join us for this inaugural event and hope you enjoy your time on campus! Included in this conference program, you will find additional information about the structure of the conference and descriptions of each session. We hope you will find this information useful for navigating your conference experience. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our planning committee or steering committee members. Sincerely,
Robyn Thomas Pitts, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Evaluation & Mixed Methods Research Morgridge College of Education University of Denver 3