About Me

Nancy Ruschman serves as project manager within the IU-Bloomington School of Education in the department of Curriculum and Instruction. In this role she manages research teams focused on evaluating toddler, youth, and family social service systems, providing on-going training, guidance, quality assurance, and systems development for project staff. Beyond supervising project staff and data collectors, Nancy acts as a liaison with the internal and external project partners, funders, and evaluation participants. 

Since 2015, Nancy has worked on a $1.2 million Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) grant conducting state-wide research on various services provided by Indiana Systems of Care. She has also served as co-author on a number of research studies . 

Further, in 2018 she began working on a $500,000 Laura and John Arnold Foundation grant which is utilizing a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate specialized services provided to foster youth and youth in care. The research will explore how these services might impact graduation rates for this population of students.

In addition, she was brought on as project manager for a $1.4 million Institute of Education Sciences (IES) federal development grant. This grant focuses on creating a framework for supporting interventions for toddlers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by promoting parent mediation of their social communication.

Prior to her work with IU Bloomington, Ms. Ruschman worked with The Blumberg Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Special Education at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, IN. In this role she had the opportunity to work extensively with teachers and administrators within 17 school districts throughout the state of Indiana to provide training and technical support in Creative Problem Solving for General Education Intervention teams (CPS for GEI). The team implemented strategies specifically tailored to the strengths of young learners who were struggling academically or behaviorally.

In a two-year evaluation study of this program, the Blumberg team outcome measures were tracked over the course of a school year. The evaluation found that the CPS for GEI teams consistently demonstrated superior performance relative to controls across all measures.

Nancy is also a published author. Her chapter, Servant-Leadership and the Best Companies to Work for in America, was published in the 2001 anthology, Focus on Leadership: Servant-Leadership for the 21st Century.

Nancy lives with her husband, Mark, in historic Irvington located in Indianapolis, IN. Her daughter, Alex, is currently a sophomore at Indiana University-Bloomington.