Skip to main content
Evaluation 2024 Main banner
Icon Legend
Presentation Icons
Birds of a Feather
Birds of a Feather
Pres Strand
Pres Strand
Extra Cost
Extra Cost
Ignite
Ignite
TIG Multipaper
TIG Multipaper
General/Social
General/Social

Mary McEathron, PhD

Research Associate
Center for Early Education and Development, University of Minnesota, United States

Mary McEathron, PhD, has more than 20 years of experience and training in evaluation design and methods. Her research interests focus on systems approaches in evaluation and evaluation’s role in bridging academic and applied worlds. Dr. McEathron’s undergraduate degree is in biology and her master’s in creative and critical writing. As a result, the systems thinking learned by studying cellular activities and metaphorical structures of narratives was naturally included in her early approach to evaluation. During the 2006 AEA conference in Portland, she attended a number of sessions sponsored by the newly formed Systems in Evaluation TIG. Dr. McEathron used the Critical Systems Heuristic in her dissertation, Independent Science Review in Natural Resource Management: Evaluation's Role in Knowledge Use, and continues to use CSH and other systems approaches throughout her work.

Currently at the University of Minnesota, Dr. McEathron is lead evaluator for a state-wide training program for early education providers, and part of a team on two federal research grants. Previously, Dr. McEathron was executive director of Rainbow Research, where she mentored new evaluation professionals and was lead evaluator for numerous projects.

Dr. McEathron received her doctorate in evaluation studies at the University of Minnesota. She is a past co-program chair for the American Evaluation Association’s Systems Thinking in Evaluation Topical Interest Group; certified professional in Human Systems Dynamics (http://www.hsdinstitute.org/); and completed practitioner classes in Sense-Making and Cynefin Framework with Cognitive Edge.

Disclosure information not submitted.

Presentation(s):