How to know you are making a difference through Evaluation

Please join us on October 22nd for our Fall Forum on Evaluation. Kathryn Owen will give you the keys to the car and show you how to document outcomes through evaluation.

Kathryn will present an overview of the critical role evaluation plays in planning, testing and measuring the success of behavior change campaigns. She'll also provide tips and resources for carrying out your own evaluation, with ample opportunity for participants to ask questions and raise any evaluation challenges they are confronting. The goal of this session is to build confidence in our ability to ask and answer the question: What difference are we making in the world?

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Kathryn Owen, Principal of Kathryn Owen Consulting LLC, brings over 25 years of experience as an evaluator focusing on informal science learning, socioemotional learning, behavior change and environmental education. She founded and grew a department dedicated to audience research and evaluation at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, and led the implementation of dozens of program, exhibit and event evaluations. She served on leadership bodies to integrate visitor feedback into decision-making at all levels of the institution and developed regional and national partnerships to advance the Zoo’s mission of animal welfare, public engagement, and wildlife conservation. Kathryn has a strong background in mixed methods evaluation and quasi-experimental design and has conducted evaluation and social science research for a range of organizations including museums, government agencies, marine science centers, zoos and aquariums, ecotourism providers and philanthropic organizations. She has taught evaluation and social science research methods extensively to museum practitioners, agency staff, graduate students and others. Kathryn serves on the Social Science Research and Evaluation Advisory Group for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), which helps advance the evaluation and research capacity of the organization’s 200+ member institutions.