Meet your DPPE instructors. These instructors bring decades of collective experience in evaluation to the classroom. As a team, they will guide you through the core and practicum courses, drawing on their knowledge of evaluation theory and practice. Read below to learn more about their experience and expertise. You can also find more information on Professor Robert Shepherd at his faculty profile page.
Robert Shepherd
Biography
Robert Shepherd is the Graduate Supervisor for the DPPE program, and full Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration.
Robert’s research spans public management and governmental reform, Indigenous public management, ethics, and policy and program evaluation. He is interested in how public accountability and oversight systems intersects to improve overall public management and governance systems. In addition, his research extends to understanding how governmental program evaluation functions can improve public policy and decision-making. Improving ethics in government also contributes to governmental legitimacy and democracy.
My research focuses on the interplay between ethics in government, oversight and public confidence. Building on the thoughts of Jeremy Bentham, I believe that systems that enhance transparency in decision-making make governments and their concomitant systems behave and work as they were intended. Making governments accountable means building a public service culture of integrity, service, and the willingness to provide forthright advice to elected leaders. My research into areas of ethics in public management, accountability, governance reform and program evaluation come together in various ways, including ultimately building a public service culture of honesty and integrity. Recent reform efforts in areas such as performance measurement, deliverology, evaluation, and audit provide fertile ground for studying how these oversight systems can make a difference to improving public confidence in government.
Robert holds an MA in Public Policy and Administration (Carleton University, Canada), MBA (University of Ottawa, Canada) and PhD in Political Science and Public Administration (University of Toronto, Canada). Please see his faculty profile page for more information.
Ardyn Nordstrom
Biography
Ardyn Nordstrom is Assistant Professor with the School of Public Policy and Administration, and a faculty instructor in the DPPE program. Her research interests include: program and policy evaluation; development economics; education; cost-benefit analysis; mixed-methods evaluation; machine learning.
Ardyn is an applied microeconomist specializing in economic development, education, food security, and gender equality. Her research focuses on how machine learning tools and text mining methods can improve the design and evaluation of development projects and policies. Prof. Nordstrom has designed and implemented numerous randomized control trials, mixed-methods evaluations, and cost-benefit analyses of projects with international agencies, governments, and NGOs. This includes projects with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Kingdom’s Agency for International Development (UKAID), World Vision International, World Vision Canada, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and the Government of Malawi’s National Planning Commission. Her work includes projects in Canada, Zimbabwe, El Salvador, Honduras, Cambodia, Brazil, Malawi, Kenya, and Uganda. Prof. Nordstrom is also a member of the One Society Network, an interdisciplinary research institute linking economists and epidemiologists to better understand and manage pandemic threats in Canada.
Ardyn holds a Bachelor of Commerce with Concentration in Finance and Minor in Economics (Carleton University); MA in Economics and Data Science (Carleton University); Remote Development Summer School (Barcelona Graduate School of Economics); PhD in Economics (Queen’s University). Please see her faculty profile page for more information.
Teaching Duties:
She currently teaches PADM 5445 : Program Evaluation Planning and Designs
Application of specific evaluation research designs to actual projects. Topics include: designs for formative, summative and developmental programs; designs for policy evaluation; attribution and contribution analysis; applied logic modeling; and managing evaluation projects at the planning stages.
Ardyn also teaches program and policy evaluation in SPPA’s Master of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership program (PANLS 5007) and Master in Public Policy and Administration program (PADM 5240).
Benoit Gauthier
Biography
Benoît is a credentialed evaluator. He came to evaluation in 1983 with a graduate degree in political science and quantitative analysis. He served as a government evaluator for seven years before moving to the private sector where he diversified his experience with assignments in strategic and organizational research and intervention, in market research, in applied social research and in policy analysis. In the early 90s, Benoît completed a graduate degree in public administration. Over the years, his involvement in more than 500 research and intervention assignments (including more than 100 evaluations) has allowed him to build a particular expertise in a variety of domains and to develop an interest in organizational management issues and the bridging of measurement concerns and management concerns.
Since 2001, Benoît has contributed to associative life in evaluation with particular involvement in the Canadian Evaluation Society (where he built the association’s web presence and later led the Credentialing program as well as the Board of Directors), the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation (treasurer and vice-president), EvalPartners (member of the Board of Trustees), and the Réseau Francophone de l’Évaluation (vice-president and president). Benoît believes that collective action is key to the development of the theory and practice of evaluation and to the professionalization of its practitioners.
Benoît also believes in the power of sharing one’s experiences and thoughts. He was the editor of the first six editions of Recherche sociale: de la problématique à la collecte des données, a textbook on social research in French. He also published some 40 articles and book chapters. Since 2000, he has made upwards of 120 presentations at conferences and in other settings.
Before lecturing at Carleton University, Benoît taught social research methodology, program evaluation and decision-making methods at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the Quebec École nationale d’administration publique, University of Ottawa, and Université du Québec en Outaouais. He is an adjunct professor at ÉNAP, an Honorary Fellow of the Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University, and a Fellow of the Canadian Evaluation Society. He has received the CES Service Award, the CES-NCC Leadership Recognition Award, the CES Award for Contribution to Evaluation in Canada, and the CESEF Award for Contribution to Research on Evaluation Practice.
Teaching Duties:
Benoît is charged with PADM 5442, Quantitative Research Methods for Program Evaluation, which introduces students to the creation, assessment, and use of quantitative data. In this regard, his claim to fame is to have developed a course that is highly practical, action-oriented and intuition-focussed: we spend time studying what can be done with the data and statistics rather than on the more or less arcane aspects of producing statistics.