Patricia Moore Shaffer is the Vice President of Research and Development at EPI.  Since her affiliation with EPI in late 2005, Patricia has led the development of the Institutional Student Retention Assessment (www.isra-online.com), an institutional self-audit and planning tool for 2- and 4-year postsecondary institutions to assess their capability to retain students. She also made significant contributions to EPI’s research on the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act on the educational outcomes of K-12 students with disabilities. She brings experience in project management, grant and proposal writing, and skills in qualitative and quantitative research design and policy analysis to her position at EPI.

Prior to joining EPI, Patricia has held positions in several formal and informal educational institutions in the United States and Canada, serving as a school district administrator, university faculty member, and museum educator and administrator. An expert planner and facilitator, she brings considerable skill in the development of program logic models; formative and summative program evaluation; and organizational policy development, analysis, and planning. Her leadership in collaborative program planning had contributed to several pioneering educational initiatives, including a Governor’s Academy in career and technical education (VA); an innovative preschool initiative, which piloted several innovative delivery strategies, including use of public, private, faith-based, and military providers and blended classrooms serving subsidized and full tuition students (VA); an on-line school multimedia initiative in strategic partnerships with private multimedia developers, national publishing firms, a national cable communications network, and a large school district (ON); and an art therapy program developed in collaboration with a drug rehabilitation center, recognized as Canada’s first museum-based art therapy program (ON).

Patricia has led workshops in program design and evaluation at the local, regional, and national level. She has served as a peer reviewer for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Georgia Council for the Arts, and the Georgia Humanities Council and on the boards of the Coalition for Arts Education (ON), Georgia Art Education Association, Ontario Association of Art Galleries, and American Association of Museums Committee on Audience Research and Evaluation. She currently serves on the boards of the Smart Beginnings Leadership Council of the Virginia Peninsula and Communities in Schools of Hampton. Patricia is a member of the American Evaluation Association.

Ms. Moore Shaffer has an extensive background in teacher professional development. During the past ten years, she has planned and implemented several single- and multi-year professional development programs for K-12 teachers, including a federally funded Teaching American History initiative. Most recently she served as an external evaluator for the College of William and Mary’s School-University Research Network (SURN), where she worked with two SURN teacher professional development initiatives focused on differentiated instruction, instructional leadership, and research-based instructional strategies to improve student content literacy in middle schools across 25 school districts in southeastern Virginia. Her academic research has focused on transfer of professional learning to instructional practice.

Ms. Moore Shaffer earned a Masters in Curriculum Studies from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto and a Bachelors in Visual Arts from Brock University, with a minor in Classical Archaeology. She is currently engaged in doctoral study in the Educational Policy, Planning and Leadership program at the College of William and Mary, with research interests in the policy implications of the interrelationships between teacher retention, compensation, and workplace conditions. Patricia is listed in the Who's Who of American Women, and lives in Hampton, Virginia, with her husband and their daughter Anna.