Pioneering scholar of evaluation recognized for outstanding research, scholarly work, and teaching and service by an emeritus or emerita professor since retirement.
Professor of Education Emeritus Marvin Alkin has been selected to receive the 2024 – 2025 Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professorship Award which includes a prize of $5,000 funded from a gift endowment established by the late Edward A. Dickson, regent of the University of California. The award honors outstanding research, scholarly work, teaching and service performed by an emeritus or emerita professor since retirement. Alkin is the only professor emeritus from the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies to ever receive the Dickson Award.
“I have had the great honor of working with Marv since his retirement and can personally attest to the impact of his contributions during this phase of his long and significant career,” says Wasserman Dean Christina Christie.
“I am deeply honored to receive this award,” says Alkin. “SEIS is my home and it is a very special place. I have been inspired all these 62 years by the warmth and colleagueship of fellow faculty and staff.”
Alkin retired in 2004, and at the time of his retirement he had been teaching at UCLA for 40 years. Post-retirement, his scholarship, service, teaching and mentorship continued, demonstrating leadership in the field of program evaluation, which he helped establish. Alkin is noted for his work related to comparative evaluation theory and has published important research studies on the topic of the use of evaluation information in decision-making, including eight books on evaluation and more than 150 journal articles, book chapters, monographs and technical reports.
Alkin has been a consultant to numerous national governments and has directed program evaluations in 18 different countries. He is especially noted for his extensive research on evaluation utilization and comparative evaluation theory.
Alkin’s publications include well over 150 published books, articles and chapters. He has edited or co-edited two seminal volumes that are widely used as textbooks. “Evaluation Roots,” was published in 2004, with a second edition in 2013, and a co-edited third edition in 2023 with Christie. The book provides a framework to compare and contrast varied approaches to program evaluation. “Evaluation Essentials: From A-to-Z,” was first published in 2011, with second and third editions in 2017 with UCLA alumna Anne Vo, and in 2024 with Vo and Christie. Professor Alkin was executive editor of the “Encyclopedia of Educational Research” (6th Edition) and co-editor of SAGE Publications’ “Evaluation in Practice Series.”
Alkin has mentored more than 35 graduate students, including 11 for whom he served as dissertation chair. He has been equally active in the classroom, teaching or co-teaching essential graduate courses in evaluation theory and evaluation procedures, a research apprenticeship course, and designed a new course for undergraduate students.
Alkin has received multiple awards from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for outstanding evaluation reports and policy studies, including the Award for the Outstanding Policy Study (1987), and the Award for the Outstanding Evaluation Report (1982). In addition, he is one of only four people to receive both major awards of the American Evaluation Association (AEA). In 1996, he was the winner of the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award for Lifelong Contributions to Evaluation Theory from AEA. In 2016, he received the Association’s Research on Evaluation Award for significant contributions to the study of evaluation.
Alkin has been editor or associate editor of eight academic journals, including the Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis Journal, and Evaluation Review. He also served as associate editor of Studies in Educational Evaluation from its inception in 1975 to 2010, and as co-section editor for the American Journal of Evaluation.
Professor Alkin joined the UCLA faculty in 1964 after receiving his doctorate from Stanford University. At UCLA, he served as chair of the Department of Education and associate dean of what was then the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Alkin was also the founder of the UCLA Center for the Study of Evaluation – known today as CRESST – and was its director for seven years.