Mary Ann Scheirer

Mary Ann Scheirer is now an Independent Consultant in program evaluation and performance measurement, as well as Adjunct Faculty of the Department of Public Administration, George Washington University. She has more than 20 years experience conducting program evaluations, with recent emphasis on developing performance measurement systems for government agencies. Her professional training was in applied sociology, including a Ph.D. in sociology and research methods from Cornell University, and a Masters' degree in Public Administration from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

Her research on assessing program implementation is published as several books, Program Implementation: The Organizational Context(1981), and A User's Guide to Program Templates: A New Tool for Evaluating Program Content (1996), as well as in the Handbook for Practical Program Evaluation (1994), and journals such as Health Education Research, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and New Directions for Program Evaluation.

Dr. Scheirer has worked with many government agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Education, the US General Accounting Office, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. She served as Chair of the Evaluation Review Panel, U.S. Public Health Service Review of Health Program Evaluations in 1994, 1995, and 1996. She served on the Board of Directors of the American Evaluation Association and the Consumer Health Foundation, and as President and Treasurer of the Washington Evaluators. In 1999, she was awarded the AEA President's Prize for her paper, "Getting More Bang' for Your Performance Measures 'Bucks.'"