Dr. Divya Bheda, Director of Education and Assessment, ExamSoft

Dr. Divya Bheda, she/her(s), is the Director of Education and Assessment at ExamSoft Worldwide LLC. She has over a decade of experience in leading program evaluations, assessments, and social justice training. She champions curricular innovation and andragogical/pedagogical excellence through assessment. Her work spans general education, administration, academic programs, certificates, and student services. She approaches data, strategic-planning, and decision-making using a formative, utilization-focused, equity-building lens. She is committed to advancing collaborative, transformative, and restorative learning in a safe space for professional accountability and growth for all higher education professionals. She has experience in online, and brick and mortar educational contexts building organizational responsiveness and catalyzing student success.

Patti Clayton, Consultant; Practitioner-Scholar in Residence, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis

Patti H. Clayton was born and raised and continues to live in North Carolina – with her husband, Kevin, and their feline family. She enjoys being in the mountains, especially in southwest Virginia, and visiting National Parks, especially Zion and Denali; John Denver, Parker Palmer, and Star Trek are major influences in her life. She is an independent consultant (PHC Ventures, www.curricularengagement.com) with over 20 years of experience as a practitioner-scholar and educational developer in service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) and in experiential education. Patti was co-editor with Bringle and Hatcher of the 2-volume set Research on Service Learning: Conceptual Frameworks and Assessment and co-authored the Democratic Engagement White Paper with Saltmarsh and Hartley and the Democratically Engaged Assessment White Paper with Imagining America’s Assessing Practices of Public Scholarship team. She co-developed the DEAL Model for Critical Reflection, the SOFAR partnership model, the TRES protocol for assessing partnership quality, and the DPI Model for Institutional Transformation. Patti’s current scholarship interests include operationalizing democratic engagement; designing critical reflection for civic learning; conceptualizing place-engaged SLCE; integrating SLCE and relationships within the more-than-human world; and exploring the power of such “little words” as in, for, with, and of to shape identities and ways of being with one another in SLCE.

Dr. Michael Seelig, Institutional Effectiveness Officer, CUNY Medgar Evers College

Dr. Michael Seelig is an Institutional Effectiveness Officer at Medgar Evers College, CUNY.  Michael began his career as a high school English teacher in California and, after earning his doctorate at the University of Southern California, worked in various state policy and central office roles across the country focusing on college readiness.  He made the transition to higher education to lead work that expanded partnership capacity between CUNY and the high schools of central Brooklyn. Michael currently focuses on planning, assessment, and building internal systems within the college to improve its capacity to be responsive to the needs of first generation students.  His research interests lie at the intersection of K12 and college and how the policies and issues of K12 impact higher education.

Dr. Natasha Jankowski, Higher Education & Assessment Consultant, N/A

Dr. Natasha Jankowski is the former Executive Director of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) and previously served as a research associate professor with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is co-author of the book Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education, as well as co-author of Degrees that Matter: Moving Higher Education to a Learning Systems Paradigm, and co-editor of Student-Focused Learning and Assessment: Involving Students in the Learning Process in Higher Education. A forthcoming book focuses on equity and assessment. Her areas of focus include assignment design, transparency, evidence-based storytelling, equity, mapping and alignment of learning, and all things assessment. Dr. Jankowski is the recipient of Kent State University’s Alumni Award and the Young Alumni Award from the College of Education at UIUC. She holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education from the University of Illinois, an M.A. in Higher Education Administration from Kent State University, and a B.A. in philosophy from Illinois State University.