UNC School of Education

>> O'Sullivan, Rita

Rita O’Sullivan specializes in developing collaborative evaluation techniques that enhance evaluation capacity and utilization among educators and public service providers. Much of her scholarly work has investigated ways to promote and conduct these evaluations. Since entering academia in 1984, she has conducted more than 40 evaluation projects, specializing in multi-site collaborative evaluation approaches in the areas of education, community development and family support programs.

O’Sullivan’s current vision of collaborative evaluation has evolved from these years of field experience. Throughout this development, she has shared her research efforts in four of the six premier refereed journals in evaluation. Further, she has reviewed articles for the American Journal of Evaluation, Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Researcher, and Evaluation.

Conducting evaluations has provided O’Sullivan with an essential laboratory to develop a distinct evaluation approach, called “collaborative evaluation.” The development of this approach has culminated in a book published by Sage Publications titled Practicing Evaluation: A Collaborative Approach (2004). The book describes the collaborative evaluation approach she has developed, addresses how it fits into the field of program evaluation and explains common evaluation techniques from a collaborative perspective.