Hazel Symonette

Ph.D.

Hazel Symonette, Ph.D., program development and assessment specialist emerita, is an evaluation facilitator and researcher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, LEAD Projects (Learning through Evaluation, Adaptation and Dissemination), and the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative (WEC).

Symonette’s work focuses on using assessment and evaluation as participant-centered self-diagnostic resources for continuous improvement, developmental innovation, and strategic image management. She advances this agenda through a variety of capacity-building strategies, using multi-level assessment/evaluation processes to advance a diversity-grounded, equity-minded agenda for personal transformation, organizational development, and social justice change. That work undergirds her long-standing involvement in creating and sustaining authentically inclusive and vibrantly responsive teaching, learning, living, and working environments that are conducive to success for all. Her work draws on social justice and systemic change research to create meaningful and life-changing interactions among students, faculty, staff, and administrators.

The cross-campus/cross-role incubators for this work were the UW Excellence through Diversity Institute (2002-2009) and the Student Success Institute (2010-2017). Both were year-long weekly communities of practice organized around mainstreaming assessment and evaluation in the service of diversity, equity, inclusive excellence and social justice for students, faculty, staff, and administrators.

Symonette is active within the professional evaluation community. She has served on the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Board of Directors, as Co-Chair of AEA’s Building Diversity Initiative and the Multi-Ethnic Issues in Evaluation Topical Interest Group and many other progressive change initiatives. Currently, she serves on the AEA Task Force on Evaluator Competencies.

Since 2008, she has also served on the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation — initially as AEA’s Representative and now as an at-large member. Hazel is an active fellow within the University of Wisconsin Teaching Academy.