Dr. Daniela Schröter

About a decade ago, I wrote my dissertation on the topic “Evaluation of Sustainability for Sustainability,” which identified two distinct perspectives for evaluating sustainability. The first focused on micro-level issues related to thecontinuation of programs, policies, and other types of human action. The second provided a macro level perspective concerned with sustaining human, social, and economic development under consideration of protecting the environment. To bridge both interdependent perspectives, an internationally validated checklist was developed. This sustainability evaluation checklist merged evaluation theory with primary sustainability evaluation concerns to aide in planning and designing evaluations OF sustainability FOR sustainability within a range of development contexts. Evaluation of sustainability was defined as the determination of merit, worth, and significance of efforts to continue a given program or policy, while evaluation for sustainability centered on determining the merit, worth, and significance in maintaining, replicating, and exporting positive (un)intended outcomes and impacts under specific consideration of global sustainability issues. Since then, much progress has been made on the topic of sustainability and sustainability evaluation. This keynote will revisit the sustainability evaluation checklist and its relevance in relation to emerging literatures, discussions, technologies, and experiences in the last decade.

 

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Dr. Daniela Schröter is an associate professor at Western Michigan University’s (WMU) School of Public Affairs and Administration, and a principal consultant at Brinkerhoff Evaluation Institute. Before joining the faculty, she served as Director of Research in WMU’s Evaluation Center. Her evaluation portfolio is interdisciplinary and international, including the United States Departments of Education and Agriculture, CDC, (inter)national science and research foundations, and for-profit clients. In 2013, she received the American Evaluation Association’s Marcia Guttentag Award for Promising New Evaluators. Her teaching and professional development portfolio include Grant Writing, Research Methods, Program Evaluation, Evaluation Theory, Goal-Free Evaluation, and the Success Case Method among others.

For more information please take a look at Dr. Schröters CV (PDF).