Alexander McCormick

Prior to my retirement, I taught in two programs in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies: Higher Education & Student Affairs and Education Policy Studies. I also served as senior associate director of the Center for Postsecondary Research (CPR).

From 2008-2021 I directed the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), the largest survey of undergraduates that examines the quality of the educational experience. Since its launch in 2000, more than 1,600 bachelor’s degree-granting colleges and universities in the US and Canada have used NSSE to assess the extent to which undergraduates engage in and are exposed to empirically supported effective educational practices. NSSE has also been adapted for use in several other countries. This work aims to enrich the discourse about quality in higher education while providing colleges and universities actionable information about the quality of the undergraduate experience. My research interests center around assessment, accountability, and evidence-informed improvement.

I taught doctoral courses in higher education organization and administration, higher education and public policy, and student engagement research.

Before coming to Indiana, I served as senior scholar at The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where I led a major overhaul of the Foundation’s widely-used classification of U.S. colleges and universities. I previously served as senior research associate at MPR Associates in Berkeley, California and as assistant dean of the College at Dartmouth.

I earned my Ph.D. in education (minor in sociology) from Stanford University. As an undergraduate, I majored in French and drama at Dartmouth College.