Brooklyn College staff were honored with a 2023 APEX Award of Excellence for public service for their production of Next Generation Assessment (NGA), a series of online interviews addressing higher education policy and accreditation issues. NGA is co-hosted and co-produced by Tammie Cumming, Brooklyn College’s Associate Provost and Assistant Vice President for the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, and co-produced by Isana Leshchinskaya, Associate Director for the College’s Office of Educational Research and Assessment. M. David Miller, a professor and director for the School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education at the University of Florida, serves as the series co-host and co-producer. Other colleges among the APEX awards recipients include Auburn University, Brown University, Drexel University, Duke University, Indiana University, and Stanford University. The NGA series began with the sponsorship of the American Association of Colleges and Universities in 2020, with short interviews of higher education experts addressing the immediate needs of assessment and accreditation practitioners at the onset of the pandemic. As the series’ popularity increased, its scope expanded to topics such as the impact of fairness and inclusion on student outcomes and other higher education and accreditation policy issues. The NGA YouTube channel regularly features discussions called “NGA Web Bites” with educators, accreditors, higher education leaders, and policymakers. Guests have included Michelle Asha Cooper, the Lumina Foundation Vice President for Public Policy, Executive Director of Lumina’s Washington, D.C. office and former acting assistant secretary for postsecondary education and deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs at the U.S. Department of Education for President Joseph Biden; Ted Mitchell, American Council on Education President and former Undersecretary of Education for President Barack Obama; Andreas Schleicher, Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; and Cynthia Jackson-Hammond, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation President, as well as other postsecondary accreditation authority presidents.
