Abstract
Many in our profession are “accidental evaluators.” This is especially true for those of us who entered the field 45 or 50 years ago when evaluation as a discipline was just emerging. I would like to comment on the inadvertent role that Dan Stufflebeam played in my becoming an evaluator and subsequently defining how I viewed evaluation.
In 1964, the U.S. Office of Education (USOE) was funding National Research and Development Centers. University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) had been unable to get a proposal started because of a fight among full professors about fostering their own self-interests. The dean appointed a committee of assistant professors and told us to write a proposal that sufficiently captured the interests of all or most of the department. Despite not having anyone at UCLA at the leading edge of this field, we came upon “evaluation” as a sufficiently encompassing title that allowed various faculty to construe their interests as somehow relevant to evaluation. Following two simulated site visits to refine the view that the evaluation focus that we presented was real and a successful USOE site visit, the Center for the Study of Evaluation (CSE) got funded. The dean appointed two full professors as codirectors (neither of whom participated in writing the proposal). He appointed me as an associate director because neither of the codirectors wished to be bothered with administrative detail and I had shown some administrative ability in putting the proposal together. After two years, the USOE recommended an administrative change—much to the relief of the directors and especially the associate director. A search for a director commenced. I wanted to see this enterprise that I had helped to found succeed and strongly recommended that Daniel Stufflebeam would be a wonderful choice to lead the center. With Dan as director, I would be satisfied that the center would be in good hands and I could fall back to my original work on cost analysis and other cost-related activities. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for me if one takes the long-term view) that did not transpire.
I was asked to be the director of CSE and reluctantly agreed. As director, I felt that I no longer could focus on my more limited evaluation-related cost activities and needed to really begin to learn about this emerging field. I had read the works of the three or four leading theorists at that time and was most impressed with Dan Stufflebeam and the context, input, process, and product (CIPP) model. This work made sense—evaluation focused on decision makers and their use of evaluation information. I made some minor modifications and fit the CIPP model to my emerging preferences and created what I referred to as the CSE model. In essence, this helped me to clarify the role of process and outcome at both formative and summative levels and some further expansion of the input portion of CIPP.
I subsequently became less interested in model development and did not pursue it further but Dan’s influence on CSE and its orientation was enormous. And, Dan’s influence on my thinking about evaluation was substantial. The notion of evaluation as essentially related to decision makers/potential users and having as a goal maximizing the potential use of the information stuck with me. My views on evaluation and especially my extensive research on evaluation utilization are a product of Dan’s influence.
Dan not only influenced me, but all of those subsequent evaluation theorists who viewed evaluation use as a primary goal also benefited from Dan’s work. The ideas behind the CIPP model are at the root of utilization focused evaluation, empowerment evaluation, participatory evaluation, organizational learning and capacity building, interactive evaluation practice, and many other theoretic views. The view of evaluation use as a purpose has also had great influence on evaluation practice, independent of particular evaluation theories that might or might not be employed.
I recognize and am appreciative of Dan’s many other contributions to the evaluation field such as the work of The Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation (1981) leading to The Program Evaluation Standards. And in particular, I note the Standards related to evaluation use as emanating from Dan’s influence. Further, the creation of the Interdisciplinary PhD in Evaluation program at WMU is an important accomplishment. These topics, I am sure, are more fully covered by others writing in this volume.
I obviously have known Dan for a great many years and while we have worked together on only a few professional ventures, I believe that we have had a warm and very respectful relationship to each other. He is a very important part of our evaluation history and I will personally miss him.