Denise Baer, Ph.D.

denisebaer@gmail.com

George Washington University

Phone: 2404985409

Address: PO Box 5729

City: Bethesda, Maryland - 20824

Country: United States

About Me:

Denise Baer is Director of Evaluation for the Center for Private International Enterprise (CIPE), one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy.  She is also adjunct faculty in the Elliott School at the George Washington University, and Chair of the Democracy and Governance Thematic Interest Group for the American Evaluation Association.  Baer's abiding career interests have been diverse but have centered around the complex interplay between reform and institutions in political and democratic development, filling the RESEARCH-practice and PRACTICE-research gaps in how we understand society and politics, civics and civic engagement as the responsibility of political science education and practice, social and political movements as agents of change, women's economic and political empowerment, and expanding the use of mixed methods for causal inference to address the contribution/attribution divide.  She was trained as an Americanist and has gained expertise in comparative democratization through her post-Ph.D. work and experience.  Baer has used delegate surveys and participant observation as the foundation for her work in political parties, having observed Democratic and Republican conventions since 1988 and is committed to the enterprise of objective and triangulated research based upon informed observations in the field.At CIPE, Baer leads and manages the Evaluation Department and serves as CIPE's principal internal expert on monitoring and evaluation building evaluation capacity smong CIPE staff and partners, developing and validating tools, hiring external evaluators, overseeing and implementing evaluation of CIPE projects, development and oversight of evaluation plans (logframes, logic models, theories of change, results frameworks, performance monitoring and data plans) for the U.S. agencies and global donors.  At CIPE, she is also the internal expert on gender and development and has served as the Co-Chair of the Women's Entrepreneurship Staff Forum.Prior to joining CIPE, Baer has been a research consultant providing research, governance and social science consulting for a variety of federal agencies and nonprofit organizations, including international work for USAID, IFES, NDI and IWPR.  She has also worked for the Congressional Research Service as an Analyst in American National Government and served as an American Political Science Congressional Fellow in the 103rd Congress in the House Democratic Caucus and for Rep. Dvid Price, working on congressional reform and authoring a history of the Caucus.Baer has over 25 years experience teaching political science and research methods at major universities. She has directed and managed experiential internship programs, most recently as Director of the Boston University Washington Academic Center.  In addition, Baer has considerable experience in adult professional education, including "Train-the-Trainer" models for professional staff as well as for leadership and performance evaluation training, including for the National Governor's Association, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs.  As a political consultant, she has developed and delivered candidate and leadership training, provided liaison and outreach, and conducted research for a variety of organizations such as the National Political Congress of Black Women, National Women's Political Caucus, Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, House Democratic Caucus, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.Baer is intensely interested in women's history, including women's museums, research institutes, monuments and historical parks and trails which memorialize women's accomplishments and previously served on the Board of the Women's History Project.  She also has a growing expertise in nonprofit organizations and boards, including completing work on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute of Management (IOM) and developing new CIPE tools on collaboration and association capacity assessment.

Research Interests

Political Parties and Interest Groups

Research Methods & Research Design

Gender and Politics

Development

Nonprofits

Elections, Election Administration, and Voting Behavior

Political Party Conventions

Women's Movements

Gender & Institutions

American Political Parties

Monitoring & Evaluation

Challenges To Democracy

Countries of Interest

United States

My Research:

Baer is the author or co-author of three books and numerous scholarly articles, reports and monographs which have included experimental, survey, focus group and key informant interview methods on a variety of topics including political parties, campaign finance, institutions and institutionalization and women and politics as well as program evaluations.  Currently, she is completing work on a book ms. Delivering Measurable Performance:  Performance Evaluation Methods, Strategies and Tools for Policy Makers and Program Managers and hopes to return to her other writing projects on women, women's history and political parties and democracy, including participant observation at the 2020 Democratic and Republican conventions.