Meet Our Consultants

Consultant biographical sketches of our evaluation team includes senior professionals who are skilled in working with agencies responsible for public education, facilitating groups in reaching consensus, organizing meetings, and developing well written reports.

The Tidwell Team Includes:

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Mr. Ritchie Tidwell

Mr. Ritchie Tidwell brings an unusual set of skills and experience to a project. Mr. Tidwell had a distinguished 16-year career in the public sector:

Directing and evaluating criminal and juvenile justice grant programs in two states.
Serving as a committee director in the Florida House of Representatives.
Serving as a senior level policy advisor for a South Carolina governor who led educational reform efforts in S.C. in the 1980’s and later at the national level.
Conducting efficiency reviews for school districts

While working for the Florida legislature, Mr. Tidwell wrote legislation that created a statewide system of juvenile justice, intake, probation, aftercare, and detention facilities.

He was also a co-director of the S.C. Children’s coordinating cabinet, a group of state agency directors created by Governor Richard Riley to maximize the level of coordination on policy and budget issues pertaining to children and youth.

Mr. Tidwell spearheaded legislation which created a crime victims bill of rights and legislation to address prison overcrowding.

Mr. Tidwell, who has managed multiple program evaluations in the public and private sector, is easy to work with, and is committed to demonstrating what strategies have the desired impact of increased educational achievement and positive behavioral health changes.

Mr. Tidwell has been the architect of many program initiatives involving school districts, with particular emphasis on:

Substance abuse and mental health intervention and treatment programs, safe schools, healthy students, and violence prevention.
Community collaborations (such as Fighting Back).
After school and dropout prevention programs.
Intensive program reviews, such as the evaluation of the state intervention and assistance program for low performing schools.

As a result of managing grant programs in two states, and directing evaluations for 44 federal grant initiatives, Mr. Tidwell is well skilled in managing evaluation teams in producing high quality reports.

Mr. Tidwell has worked with multiple school districts in South Carolina and Florida. He has regularly communicated with federal representatives over the years.

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Dr. Pam Imm

Dr. Pam Imm is a trained community psychologist and has extensive experience in the areas of program development, program evaluation, and applied research. Dr. Imm has worked as an evaluator with various local, state, and national agencies including:

The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention
The Center for Substance Abuse Treatment
The Office of National Drug Control Policy
The Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America
Tidwell & Associates, Inc.
SC Department of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services
Lexington/Richland Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council (LRADAC)
Drug and Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services (DAODAS)
Screening Brief Intervention and Treatment (SBIRT) grant

Dr. Imm is also affiliated with the University Of South Carolina and the Lexington-Richland Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council in Columbia, SC.

Dr. Imm is the lead author on the manual, “Preventing Underage Drinking: Using the Getting to Outcomes Model and SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework to Achieve Results”.

This manual includes methods and tools for how to plan, implement, and evaluate environmental strategies. The manuals and related work in the Getting to Outcomes (GTO) system were awarded the status of outstanding publication by the American Evaluation Association in November 2008.

Dr. Imm has worked in a variety of content areas including education programs such as the effectiveness of prevention, early intervention, and counseling programs. Dr. Imm worked with staff serving in Governor Hodge’s administration to promote early childhood education through effective programs, policies, and practices.

Dr. Imm is proficient in quantitative and qualitative research methods and has taught undergraduate statistics and research design courses as well as graduate program evaluation courses. Dr. Imm currently supervises doctoral graduate students in their dissertation which requires expertise in research design methods, statistical analyses, and various statistical packages.

Knowledge of processes and statistical methods has helped her secure research grants from various agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Education, and various agencies that focus on prevention (e.g., SAMHSA, NIDA).

Dr. Imm works with researchers at the Rand Corporation to plan mixed method research designs and provides training for community members and professionals on various methods of data collection and analyses (e.g., focus groups).

Dr. Imm is an active member and frequent presenter at the American Evaluation Association (AEA). Dr. Imm served as a co-evaluator on an adolescent treatment enhancement grant and lead evaluator on an SBIRT grant with DAODAS.

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Maria McCall, MSW MS.

Maria McCall holds a Master’s Degree in Social Work with a focus on the Interaction Between Systemic Functioning and Individual Behavior. Her areas of evaluation specialization include:

Development of Logic Models
Implementation Timelines
Data Collection Instruments & Reporting Protocols
Statistical Reports for Documenting
Disseminating Evidence of Program Effects and Outcomes.
Healthy Transitions Project
HIV Capacity Building

Projects and Modalities assessed include:

Statewide infrastructure and service delivery programs to improve the behavioral health system of care for adolescents and transitional age youth.
Family centered substance use treatment for women and their families.
Public health programs to address students’ health barriers to learning.

Comprehensive programs to reduce youth violence and increase healthy behavior.
Alcohol and other drug prevention programming.
Juvenile justice programs for at risk youth and juvenile offenders.

For projects involving collection of federal Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) data, Ms. McCall is the Tidwell Team Lead for Quality Assurance, Data Monitoring, And Report Development.

Most recently, Ms. McCall serves as:

the lead evaluator for the South Carolina Department of Mental Health’s healthy transitions project
the lead evaluator for Circle Park’s Pregnant and Postpartum Women’s Initiative
the sole evaluator on the Healthy Learners project in five SC locations
the lead evaluator for Team Management 2000’s HIV capacity building initiative in New Jersey
Co evaluator for Team Management 2000’s Treatment to End Homelessness project in New Jersey.

She must frequently develop a secure means of integrating a variety of elements from distinct sources, including training the contracting agency’s staff on how to enter data. Ms. McCall’s analytic strengths are descriptive statistics, including identification of disparities between subgroups of clients, and data interpretation. Ms. McCall is often involved in reporting project results for a variety of audiences. Most frequently, she contributes to the evaluation section of federal reports, develops data snapshots or slideshows for use in continuous quality improvement efforts, and develops newsletters or other concise documents highlighting project outcomes for community stakeholders.

All of the evaluation projects in which Ms. McCall participates involve data collection, analysis and administration. As a member of the Tidwell Team, Ms. McCall:

Analyzes each project’s objectives.
Identifies key quantitative data elements needed to measure progress.
Works with staff from the contracting agency to determine the specific methods of collection to be used, with emphasis placed on taking advantage of data already being collected for other purposes.
Statistical Reports for Documentation

Lisa Van Bergen, M Ed, LPC, LAC

Ms. Van Bergen , LPC, CACII, is a mental health professional with 28 years’ experience in the state of South Carolina. She has provided direct services, clinical supervision, administrative supervision, program development, program implementation, program evaluation, and training. Ms. Van Bergen has conducted training locally, throughout the state, and in national arenas. She has worked in agencies, schools, government and nonprofit settings. Ms. Van Bergen has extensive experience working collaboratively among agencies, including close cooperation with the Departments of Education, Social Services, and Juvenile Justice. She was a part of the development of drug courts in her community. In addition, she has strong ties to colleagues across the country working in the field of child welfare. Ms. Van Bergen was involved in a national study of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) survey among young women that resulted in a presentation of findings at the White House and to Congress, stressing the importance of trauma treatment. She currently provides consulting to other organizations in the fields of mental health, addiction, and social services, focusing on grant-writing and evaluation. Recently, Ms. Van Bergen, has written and had funded two federal grants, a SAMHSA grant and an Early Head Start Expansion Grant. She is currently the lead evaluator on a federal TIEH (Treatment for Individuals Experiencing Homelessness) grant.

To learn more about how Tidwell & Associates, Inc. can meet your program evaluation and funding needs: