Rockman et al Cooperative (REA) strives to honor diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across our research and evaluation work and organizational processes. Our team is versatile, bringing a unique combination of experiences, expertise and perspectives to each project. Our researchers hold advanced degrees in a variety of fields including research methodology, developmental psychology, education, and media studies. We apply a culturally-responsive and equitable lens that incorporates participants’ voices and experiences, and considers the wider social and community context surrounding the program or object of analysis. We have past and current projects evaluating interventions focused on equity-centered questions, as well as in-school, after-school, public media, and informal learning programs designed for students of color and groups historically underrepresented in STEM or other fields. We continually aim to make our processes, results, and plans for dissemination, accessible, transparent, and focused on participating communities.
REA collectively recognized equity as a company priority and formed a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) Work Group to examine the current state of our work and staff capacity, establish strategic goals, and document our progress against benchmarks in a DEI Roadmap. We are shifting ourselves internally by acknowledging our biases and challenging and changing the ways we conduct our work. Through externally-led training and internal professional development, we are building organizational culture to intentionally reflect DEI principles and responsive evaluation strategies across our projects.