Associate Dean, Administration, Planning, and Assessment, Carnegie Mellon University
Laura I. Spears, PhD. (laura.spears@ufl.edu), is the Director of the Assessment & User Experience and Associate University Librarian with the George A. Smathers Libraries. Her job responsibilities include examining library data that demonstrate library impact on the life of all types of library users. Recent publications focus on overnight library use, interdisciplinary examinations of library space use and the use of Appreciative Inquiry in CoLAB Workshops. Laura works closely with the UF Academic Assessment Committee and is currently the President of the Florida Library Association, and is co-Editor of the open-access, online, peer-reviewed journal, The Journal of Assessment in Higher Education.
Associate Director for Organizational Research and Strategy Alignment, Temple University
Nancy B. Turner is the Associate Director for Organizational Research and Strategy Alignment at Temple University Libraries. In this role she supports data-driven decision making by cultivating a robust data collection infrastructure, provides oversight for assessment and research activities at the Libraries, and helps to develop organizational structures that align practice with the Libraries’ strategic actions. She has worked in other academic libraries (Syracuse University and New Mexico State University) in addition to public and special libraries. She received her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Arts in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, her M.L.I.S from Clark Atlanta and completed a Master of Education in Adult and Organizational Development from Temple University in the spring of 2021. Turner convenes the ACRL Assessment Discussion group and serves on the leadership team of the CORE Assessment Section.
She profiles local assessment activities on her blog Assessment on the Ground at https://sites.temple.edu/assessment/ .