A Letter From The Co-Directors

The STEM Program Evaluation Lab (SPEL) is co-directed by two Black women faculty. This is not typical as students, faculty, and principal investigators don't often see Black women securing million-dollar grants, or leading large research or evaluation initiatives, particularly in the field of program evaluation. Our co-leadership approach assists us in the management of our large team of graduate and undergraduate students, projects, and weekly lab meetings from across two institutions: Arizona State University and UNC Greensboro. Over the course of the past two years, we have grown from a few small-scale projects to over a dozen projects with extensive scopes and budgets. 

We are proud of our social justice commitments and they show up in all aspects of the lab. Included in these commitments are our innate desire to challenge the status quo, argue that evaluation can and should embody the values of a more just society, and endeavor to meaningfully, and respectfully attend to issues of culture, race, diversity, power, inclusion, and equity. We are one of the only spaces in the nation where students practice culturally responsive and values-engaged, educative evaluation. Welcome to SPEL.