Dr. Tarek Azzam

Dr. Tarek Azzam is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara Evaluation Centre in the Department of Education. Dr. Azzam’s research focuses on developing new methods suited for real-world evaluations. These methods attempt to address some of the logistical, political, and technical challenges that evaluators commonly face in practice. His work aims to improve the rigour and credibility of evaluations and increase their potential impact on programmes and policies. His research work involves studying the impact of politics on the evaluation process, and the integration of new technologies and resources, such as crowdsourcing, to develop new evaluation-specific methodologies.

Dr. Azzam has also been involved in multiple research and evaluation projects that have included the evaluation of student academic and retention programs at the K–12 and higher education levels, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education programmes, children’s health programmes, and international schools and development programmes. Dr. Azzam is also the director of the Center for Evaluation & Assessment (CEA) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an active member of the American Evaluation Association.