MARY J. ALLEN is director of the California state University Institute for Teaching and Learning and former director of the Faculty Teaching & Learning Center and Assessment Center at California State University, Bakersfield. She earned a master’s degree in statistics and a Ph.D. in psychology from the university of California, Berkeley, and she taught these subjects for over two decades before branching into faculty development and assessment. She serves as a thinking partner on educational effectiveness for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC); is Executive Editor of Exchanges, the California State University online journal on teaching and learning; and regularly presents workshops on assessment, including the AAHE/WASC collaborative workshop, Building Learner-Centered Institutions: Developing Institutional Strategies for Assessing & Improving Student Learning.