Tim Schermer is director of institutional research at Augustana College. The IR Office maintains a schedule of national and local surveys, e.g. CIRP, NSSE, FSSE, CSS, HERI Faculty Survey, first-year survey, senior survey, alumni surveys, etc., for assessment and other purposes. Tim has also been involved with Augustana's faculty assessment committee in assisting academic departments in their own assessment efforts.
Prior to his directorship, Tim was a member of the mathematics faculty at Augusta, and he retains a quantitative analysis orientation with an interest in statistical methods.
More recently, under a grant from the Teagle Foundation, Tim has been working with a six-school consortium to directly measure student growth in writing and critical thinking skills through use of the national CLA exam and faculty reading of student papers, and to relate these results to indirect measures from student self-reports on the CSS and NSSE of their academic growth and college experiences.