Center Director, Education Evaluation Center

Dr. Robert Ayres is Director of The Education Evaluation Center (EEC) housed at The Research Institute at Western Oregon University. He has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Oregon. He has been Director of the EEC since 2014 and is also a founding member of the Center on Research, Evaluation & Analysis (CREA - formerly known as ERGo).

Dr. Ayres holds a standard certificate as a school psychologist and has over 35 years of experience conducting clinical assessments and consultations with students and their families on disability issues such as learning disorders, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and other social-emotional issues.

Dr. Ayres also is experienced with mixed-method/multiple-method evaluation designs and has prior experience with federal grants employing quasi-experimental pretest-posttest comparison designs and in research employing randomized control trials. He has served as principal evaluator on a variety of evaluation and research projects such as Structure of the Intellect, via contract with the Oregon Department of Education, the Oregon Forestry Extension Program, via contract with the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, and the Western Oregon University Teacher Effectiveness Project Phases I and II.

In addition, Dr. Ayres served as team investigator for the human resources portion of the Final Evaluation of the City-State Partnership, Senate Bill 795-Improvements in the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) under the New Board of School Commissioners, via sub-contract with WESTAT.

Dr. Ayres previously taught Research Methods in Education for 15 years in the College of Education at Western Oregon University.