Michael Quinn Patton is an independent consultant with more than 40 years’ experience conducting applied research and program evaluations. He was on the faculty of the University of Minnesota for 18 years, including five years as director of the Minnesota Center for Social Research, where he was awarded the Morse-Amoco Award for innovative teaching. He has authored a number of books on evaluation, many for SAGE Publishing (the parent of Social Science Space) and his recent Blue Marble Evaluation for Guilford. Quinn Patton is a former president of the American Evaluation Association and recipient of both the Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Award for Outstanding Contributions to Useful and Practical Evaluation and the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award for Lifelong Contributions to Evaluation Theory from the American Evaluation Association. The Society for Applied Sociology presented him the Lester F. Ward Award for Outstanding Contributions to Applied Sociology.