AEA Educational Evaluation TIG Leadership
Chair: Kinsey Simone, Ph.D. is a graduate faculty member at Tennessee Tech University and instructs various Master’s and Ph.D. courses on quantitative research methods and design. She obtained her Ph.D. in program planning and evaluation at Tech and has served in evaluation roles on various NSF-funded grants. Her primary research interests include societal perceptions of and stigmas towards obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as the effectiveness of educational interventions and events in increasing empathy and raising awareness for disorders like OCD. Dr. Simone is the founder and director of Mad Topics Symposia, which provide a holistic opportunity to hear lived Mad experiences alongside clinical perspectives.
Chair-Elect: Brianna Crumly-Goodwin, M.S. is a Ph.D. student at Auburn University majoring in Human Development and Family Sciences. Her research interests include adolescent development in social contexts, emotion regulation processes, psychometrics, and program evaluation in K-12 schools and higher education. Brianna has experience in data management and dissemination through working as a graduate research assistant on a federally funded evaluation project. She is also building her evaluation design and implementation skills though a self-developed evaluation project being carried out in the near future and is extremely excited to continue to grow her research and evaluation capabilities.
Past Chair: Jenna LaChenaye, Ph.D. currently serves as an associate professor of educational psychology and research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research interests include sensitive topics evaluation, arts-based methods, place-based education, and the application of evaluation skills in K-12 education. She has conducted extensive evaluation work in arts education, place-based STEM programming, ESOL strategies, and health-based interventions.
Program Chair: Jenna LaChenaye, Ph.D. currently serves as an associate professor of educational psychology and research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research interests include sensitive topics evaluation, arts-based methods, place-based education, and the application of evaluation skills in K-12 education. She has conducted extensive evaluation work in arts education, place-based STEM programming, ESOL strategies, and health-based interventions.
We are searching for a Program Chair-Elect and a webmaster for 2026! If you are interested in these roles, please reach out to Kinsey Simone at ksimone@tntech.edu.
Members-at-Large
Sheila Arens, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of Research, Evaluation, and Technical Assistance at McREL International. Dr. Arens holds a master’s degree in experimental psychology from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and a doctorate in inquiry methodology with emphases in program evaluation and educational policy studies from Indiana University, Bloomington. Sheila has extensive knowledge of research design, instrument development, program and policy analysis, and program evaluation theory. A common thread throughout her work is an interest in warranted claims and validity; her theoretical writings focus on the intersection of validity and context, stressing the importance of gaining a deep understanding of the space in which interventions are implemented or education is enacted to the complicated process of issuing valid claims.
Sofia Bahena, Ed.D. is an assistant professor of education at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research interests include K-12 education policy, college access, program evaluation, and scale development. Dr. Bahena has experience working with English/Spanish bilingual communities, parents and families, and conducting both quantitative and qualitative analyses. She holds a B.A. in business administration and sociology from Trinity University (San Antonio, TX) and an Ed.M. in human development and psychology and Ed.D. in cultures, communities, and education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Catherine Brooks is the Senior Research Evaluation Specialist at the Collaborative for Educational Services in Northampton, MA. She has 14 years of experience in evaluation, with particular areas of interest and expertise being participatory evaluation, school climate, community engagement, and public health. She has a B.A. in political science from Swarthmore College, and a Master of Public Policy degree from Duke University.
Maia Elkana, MSW MA is the Evaluation Director at the Institute for School Partnership at Washington University in St. Louis where she leads program monitoring and evaluation. With over 15 years experience in education, healthcare, and nonprofit evaluation, she specializes in research-practice partnerships and connecting big picture goals and theories to measurable, practical activities. Maia holds masters degrees in social work and economics, balancing a love of data analytics with a respect for the nuance of human stories. She also serves as Program Chair for the Evaluation Association of St. Louis (EASL).
Carrie Giovannone
Lisa M. Jones, Ph.D. is a Managing Researcher with McREL International. Dr. Jones holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development (with a minor in Educational Psychology) from the University of Minnesota. She has over two decades of experience evaluating educational programs across K-12 and higher education. Her research and evaluation interests include school-based mental health programs, mental wellness, educator and leader development, education policy, STEM, and organizational learning.
Dr. Keiko Kuji-Shiatani
Marlana R. Lastres, Ph.D. earned her B.S. in Secondary Education with a concentration in History, M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Curriculum, and Ph.D. in Exceptional Learning with a concentration in Program Planning and Evaluation from Tennessee Tech University. Marlana’s experiences teaching middle school, undergraduate, and graduate students and her work in institutional effectiveness have all fueled her research interests. Her research interests primarily focus on childhood trauma, at-risk populations, evaluation, and quantitative analysis.
Mya L. Martin-Glenn, Ph.D. is the Director of Assessment in the Division of Equity & Learning for Aurora Public Schools. She is responsible for directing District and state-level assessments within the district. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology and English with a minor in Psychology from Washburn University in Topeka, KS; an MA in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Research and Evaluation Methodology from the University of Colorado, Denver; and a Ph.D. at the University of Denver in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Research Methods and Statistics.
Curtis J. Mearns, Ph.D.'s early career experience included 10 years in one of the top 50 largest school districts in the nation. He developed school comparison methods, value added accountability models, equity audits, and public health evaluations associated with obesity and asthma. He transitioned to charter school support in New Mexico’s unusual regulatory environment where he developed new methods for school evaluation specific to charter schools that address common assumptions now fallacious. Over the years, Curt has collaborated with Dr Howie Knoff to evaluate various applications of multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) in federal grants (US Dept of Ed and SAMHSA). Curt has also evaluated federal suicide prevention efforts where he developed a national comparison model applicable at the state level. He has been working in the homelessness behavioral health spaces lately and occasionally in economic development. He has worked in the independent evaluation space since 2007 and began his own small, locally focused evaluation organization in 2016, Pivot Evaluation.
Melissa Page
Kari Thierer
Caroline R.H. Wiley, Ph.D. is a senior research scientist in the Validity Investigations in Education and the Workplace program at the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO). She holds a doctorate degree in educational psychology, with a minor in program evaluation, research and methodology, from the University of Arizona. She has over 17 years of experience in educational research revolving around educational policy, program evaluation in largely K-12 settings, assessment research, and classroom practices.