Torres, Rosalie T.

(b. 1955, New Orleans, Louisiana). Ph.D. Educational Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; M.S. Experimental Psychology, Southern Methodist University; B.A. cum laude Psychology, Vanderbilt University.

Torres has been influenced by the works of Robert Stake, Alan (Buddy) Peshkin, Michael Patton, Clifford Geertz, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Charles Fillmore. She has been instrumental in contributing to the articulation of practice-based theories of evaluation use and thought on the relationship between evaluation and learning at individual, team, and organizational levels. She has enhanced the profession through her consideration of strategies and practices that could increase the effectiveness of communicating and reporting in evaluation. Over the past 25 years, serving in both internal and external evaluator roles, she has conducted more than 50 evaluations in education, business, health-care, and nonprofit organizations.

She has served as an AEA Board Member, Cochair of the Evaluation Use TIG, Editorial Advisory Board Member of the American Journal of Evaluation, Editorial Board Member of the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, and Staff Director for the 1994 revision (second edition) of The Program Evaluation Standards. Torres has participated in numerous conference presentations and events with the American Evaluation Association from 1981 to the present and has coauthored Evaluative Inquiry for Learning in Organizations (with H. S. Preskill). She is the winner of the 1999 Book of the Year Award from the Academy of Human Resource Development.

Torres currently works, plays, and grows sweet peas in the San Francisco Bay Area.