Mark Connolly brings dedication to empowering both colleagues and students to all areas of his work. As a researcher for CIRTL, he believes in participatory evaluation – training his colleagues to evaluate their own programs.

“I absolutely love collegiate life,” Connolly said. His interest in a smorgasbord of university issues – from undergraduate life to faculty preparation – led him to pursue a master’s degree and then a doctorate in programs related to higher education.

“What really makes evaluation meaningful is to try to democratize it,” Connolly said. As an evaluator, he tries to “de-center” himself so that he becomes less essential to the process. Innovations are more likely to be sustained when a lot of people know how to do evaluation, he said.

Part of Connolly’s job is to help people “be comfortable… with being ignorant about evaluation,” he explained. Once he sets people at ease and invites them to participate, the results are much more effective than one person could produce alone.

Connolly compared the way he works to the children’s story, “Stone Soup.” With a laugh, he said that he is like the “charlatan” with the stone who encourages everyone else to add their vegetables to the stew.

Although he is modest about his techniques, Connolly has a knack for creating inviting environments for participatory evaluation. His inclusive methods are having a positive effect within Delta, CIRTL’s learning laboratory on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
 
Throughout his career, Connolly has maintained a strong interest in diversity. “I really miss opportunities to engage and challenge myself with respect to diversity,” Connolly said. His research has included a study of the cultural issues surrounding the use of Native American mascots. Connolly has also written about the undergraduate experiences of LGBT students.

Connolly’s research on LGBT life on campus inspired him to title one of his new publications “Coming Out as a College Teacher at a Research University.” He compares the stigma of disclosing that one is more interested in teaching than in research to the stigma of revealing one’s LGBT identity. “It’s o.k. to be a teacher,” he said. 

November 30, 2006

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