Jane Whynot holds a PhD from the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa; her area of research regards the integration of Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA Plus) in the Canadian federal government evaluation system. She has always been interested in how equity, diversity and inclusion are reflected in performance stories and came by this interest honestly after spending almost a decade at Status of Women Canada (SWC) as the organization’s solo evaluator.
Jane’s current research stems from a Masters of Assessment and Evaluation (University of Melbourne), and a graduate certificate in Policy and Program Evaluation (Carleton University) as part of the DPPE’s first cohort. She started teaching in PADM5445 Evaluation Design and Implementation with one of her mentors but shifted to PADM5443 Qualitative Methods in Evaluation as the program shifted online. Jane holds undergraduate degrees in both Sociology (Carleton University) and psychology (York University). She has also taught Introduction to Evaluation courses at other universities but her priorities are strongly aligned with Carleton University’s emphasis on theory-based approaches. Jane has also been a contract instructor sharing her expertise on GBA Plus with other provinces.
Jane has published in the areas of theory-based evaluation, evaluation capacity building, mentoring efforts in evaluation, intersectionality in evaluation, and evaluation education. She regularly serves as a reviewer for the evaluation journals on these topics.
Jane currently serves as part of the editorial team as the book review editor for the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation (CJPE) and has been a judge at the Canadian Evaluation Society’s Educational Fund (CESEF) Case Competition where evaluation students from across the country compete to demonstrate their fledging evaluation expertise. Jane is the former Past-President of the Canadian Evaluation Society’s National Capital Chapter.
In this capacity, Jane served as one of the co-chairs of the CES national evaluation conference in 2014 which included all responsibilities related to all dimensions of planning and executing an evaluation conference. She has been honoured with both academic and professional society awards for her work in the area of gender and evaluation at the national and local levels: in 2020 Jane received CES’s National Service to the Society Award and in 2021 was honoured as the recipient of the Karl Boudreault Award for Leadership in Evaluation.
Teaching Duties
She currently teaches PADM5443: Qualitative Research Methods in Evaluation.
The course covers qualitative methods used in evaluation research, introducing students to techniques such as qualitative data gathering and how to manage, evaluate and report qualitative evidence. Students will also consider how to formulate research questions and design research strategies in light of their questions.