Simeon P. Slovacek, Ph.D., joined CSULA in 1981 as Director of Institutional Research and sometime later joined the Charter College of Education as a full-time faculty member teaching in the Division of Applied & Advanced Studies (formerly known as Educational Foundations & Interdivisional Studies). His current duties include teaching, research, scholarship, advisement, research and evaluation project grants and contracts administration, and charter schools governance work. Prior to joining CSULA, he served as Director of Analytical Studies at Cornell University where he earned his Master’s and Doctorate degrees in the field of educational research and evaluation methodology. Dr. Slovacek recently serves as Principal Investigator on an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health. As Principal Evaluator of the Program Evaluation & Research Collaborative (PERC) office at Cal State LA, Dr. Slovacek has conducted numerous evaluations and research grants/contracts over the years. He has evaluated evaluation projects with the California Arts Council, the Long Beach Unified School District Healthy Start program (Prop 10), the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Los Angeles Music Center Education Division, Maxine Waters Saturday Academy program (a NASA funded project), National Institutes of Health funded projects such as the Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE) programs at Cal State LA, the MBRS RISE and MARC U*STAR programs at Cal State Dominguez Hills, the Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program at Charles Drew University, the Cancer Collaborative program at Cal State LA and City of Hope among others. He also served as Site Director on the International Social Studies University/K-12 Exploration Series (ISSUES) program funded by out of Stanford University through the states California Subject Matter Project (CSMP). Dr. Slovacek was also on the California Department of Education’s list of approved evaluators for the State’s Immediate Interventions for Under-performing Schools program. Since 1994, he has served as a founding board of trustee member for nineteen start-up charter schools (serving over 6,000 children) launched by 3 non-profits. Two are in the Los Angeles Unified School District: The Accelerated Schools and The Inner City Education Foundations (for the View Park Preparatory Accelerated Charter Schools) and one is in Pomona: The School of Arts and Enterprise. He has served in various board officer capacities. He currently serves as Secretary for all 2 of these non-profits, Treasurer for The School of Arts and Enterprise and is Vice President for The Accelerated Schools board. Their combined annual operating budgets exceed $70,000,000/year. Dr. Slovacek also co-authored the charter petition and helped to obtain district authorization for the recently constructed Marc and Eva Stern Math and Science (MASS) charter school on the Cal State LA campus.
Dr. Slovacek has taught courses in several masters programs (Educational Foundations, Computer Education, Research & Evaluation and Ed. Administration). His areas of expertise include school reform with an emphasis on charter schools, research and evaluation methodology, assessment and testing, statistics, and technology in Education. He also helped to start the Masters program in Research and Evaluation and serves as a core faculty member of the Educational Leadership Doctoral program in the Charter College of Education - the 1st independent Doctoral program accredited at Cal State LA.
Dr. Slovacek has authored and co-authored twenty-eight refereed journal publications, five books and book chapters, and written ninety-six reports (primarily from funded evaluation projects). He has given 119 presentations and 28 invited talks at professional conferences and workshops. He currently serves as Principal Investigator on an R01 grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) investigating the efficacy of the MORE (Minority Opportunities in Research) Programs at three universities (Cal State LA, San Francisco State University and New Mexico State University). Currently, he is Principal Evaluator on close to a dozen evaluation projects.