The Executive Board of CEA has three items for your consideration on the ballot this year. The ballot will close at 10:00pm CST on Saturday, December 18th. Active CEA members each may cast one vote.

The three items on the ballot are the election of a President, Vice President, and Treasurer. Elections for these positions are decided by a simple majority of votes cast.

CEA Members will receive the ballot in their inbox on 12/15.

The slate of candidates for each position includes:

President:

Sheila Rodriguez

I am honored to be nominated as a candidate for the position of President-Elect of the Chicago Evaluation Association. For the past 3 years I have been an active member of the CEA and for the past 10 years an active American Evaluation Association member.  For the past year I have had the honor of being the Vice President of CEA, which was a new role for the association. My passion lies in education, evaluation, and research. My thinking about evaluation has been expanded by the knowledge shared and by my interactions with established and emerging evaluators who are as passionate, if not even more, about the importance of evaluation work.

I am currently a Senior Technical Assistance and Training Associate at Education Development Center (EDC) in Chicago, IL. I have extensive experience in evaluation, conducting research studies, project management and developing professional development for educators.  I started my career, over 13 years ago, as a research assistant for the American Institutes for Research (AIR)and worked my way through the research and evaluation career path. It was when I started at EDC, over 8 years ago, where I was introduced to evaluation and given the opportunity to do some evaluation work, specifically in out of school time.  This is where my love for evaluation began. I continue to grow in my understanding and experience in evaluation work and the importance of evaluation in education. For the last six years, I have been the statewide evaluator for a state education agency’s federally funded afterschool program and manage the data collection activities and relationship-building with the client and its grantees. In the last 3-4 years I have been involved in various evaluation projects, which focus on STEM education, Science education for girls of marginalized groups and 

I have extensive experience providing coaching and building the capacity of state-, district- and school-level educators. I co-authored a continuous improvement toolkit designed to help school- and district-based practitioners in a continuous improvement effort and I provide extensive coaching to schools and districts in implementing the continuous improvement process. I am involved in EDC’s EDI Committee and facilitate trainings on implicit biases, all on a voluntary basis. I am fully bilingual in Spanish and English and I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in Educational Studies from Brown University and a Master’s in Education in Educational Leadership from Argosy University-Schaumburg.  

Vice President:

Casey Solomon- Filer

Casey Solomon-Filer (she/her) is an evaluator with BECOME Center for Community Engagement and Social Change, and also works as a consultant for national and international projects. Her passion for the field stems from the potential for evaluation to support the redistribution of power towards a more just world. She has a particular interest in culturally responsive evaluation, feminist evaluation, and systems change. Her evaluation experience includes programs on civic engagement, training, informal learning, community organizing, STEM, and conservation. Casey dabbled in evaluation for years before fully stepping into the profession in 2016. She has a Master of Arts in Program Evaluation from Michigan State University and another in Arab Studies with a concentration on Culture and Society from Georgetown University. 

Casey has served as a programming committee co-chair with Chicagoland Evaluation Association (CEA) for three years. During her involvement she sought to open opportunities for more CEA voices to steer programming decisions while also showcasing the work and talents of more of our members. She is grateful for the opportunity she had to serve the organization and CEA community, and is currently running for the position of Vice President of CEA.

Casey’s recent pastimes include hiking, visiting museums, staying up way too late doing very little, and trying to convince her soon-to-be two and five-year olds to find games they can play together that do not involve high-pitched screaming.

Treasurer:

Rebecca Teasdale

I am an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and have served as Treasurer of the Chicagoland Evaluation Association (CEA) for the past 2 years (2020-2021). As a researcher, I investigate and develop strategies evaluators use to define success for educational and social interventions and represent those definitions as evaluative criteria. I aim to help evaluators pursue multidimensional definitions of success, center the voices of program participants and community members, and advance equity and social justice in evaluation. My evaluation practice focuses on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in formal and informal contexts, and I teach graduate-level courses in evaluation and research methods. Previously, I served as a Senior Evaluation and Research Associate with Garibay Group, where I conducted culturally responsive and equity-focused evaluations of informal STEM education. I hold a PhD in educational psychology with specialization in evaluation methodology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a CEA member since 2013, I have benefited greatly from my participation in CEA’s professional development, networking, and leadership opportunities. I hope to continue to support CEA’s growth and development by serving an additional 1-year term as Treasurer.