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During the 2024-2025 academic year, The Evaluation Center at the University of Colorado Denver celebrated an extraordinary milestone — 20 years of providing exceptional program evaluation for projects large and small, across disciplines and content areas, and across international borders.

“Our team is proud of the value that we've been able to bring to our clients for the past 20 years,” said Jeffrey Proctor, director of the Evaluation Center. “We help them do the best work they can do by ensuring that their unique and impactful work is informed and celebrated with evidence.”

_{Jeffrey Proctor, Director of the Evaluation Center}

The Evaluation Center was initially envisioned by Dean Lynn Rhodes and its first director Bonnie Walters as an opportunity to support K-12 school districts by providing professional evaluation and as a strategy to offer SEHD graduate students with a way to gain real-life evaluation experience. Opening in 2004 with a staff of three, the Center quickly expanded to other disciplines and grew to the current team of 16 professionals and seven graduate research assistants from a variety of backgrounds and fields.

The team found there was a great need for high quality evaluation in the fields of higher education, public and behavioral health, community non-profit programs, and medical training. As a result, The Evaluation Center can operate as a fee for service agency that is 100% supported through grant and client funding. Current and recent regional and global clients include the University of Zimbabwe, New Mexico State University, and California State University Northridge.

Additionally, The Evaluation Center supports several projects with all four University of Colorado campuses and with several state departments including the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the Colorado Behavioral Health Administration, and the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority. Current nonprofit clients of The Evaluation Center include Mile High Youth Corps, Illuminate Colorado, Rise Above, ReVision, and Caring for Denver Foundation.

The Evaluation Center team provides innovative evaluation services to clients by implementing a wide range of evaluation theories, approaches, and dissemination methods. Services can include typical evaluation functions like analyzing and visualizing data and conducting interviews, focus groups, and surveys. They also implement more specialized skills such as designing interactive dashboards, writing for publication, preparing grant proposals, and sharing data in ways that make data accessible to a wide variety of audiences.

_{Susan Connors, Associate Director of The Evaluation Center}

The Evaluation Center strives to meet the needs of their clients. “We are partners,” said Susan Connors, associate director at The Evaluation Center. “We place high value on collaboration with our clients through all phases of a project to help collect feedback for program improvement and to measure success.”

The Evaluation Center’s success is evident in feedback from current clients.

"Since 2018, I have collaborated with The Evaluation Center on three grant-funded projects related to broadening participation in engineering and STEM,” said David C. Mays, P.E., Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at CU Denver. “Prior to this, I had never attempted qualitative research; looking back, I cannot imagine doing this work without their expert assistance. I cannot say enough positive things about Christine Velez, who has been my primary evaluator on all three projects, but I would add that I have also collaborated with other professionals at The Evaluation Center and every one of them has been punctual, proactive, and personable."

"The Evaluation Center has greatly benefited our work in the substance use prevention field and helped us become nationally known,” lauded Sharon Liu, director of community prevention and early intervention violence and injury prevention for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. “The team regularly conducts statewide assessments to inform us about what works and where our systems need to improve. The evaluation data, analysis, and reports ensure that we are actively listening and working to improve our impact on communities at the local and state levels."

Moving forward, The Evaluation Center team members look forward to partnering with new and continuing clients, producing unparalleled evaluation websites, dashboards, and reports, and being an integral part of the CU community.

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