Trudy Bers is Executive Director of Research, Curriculum and Planning at Oakton Community College in the northern suburbs of Chicago. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Illinois-Urbana, and holds an M.B.A. for the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, an A.M. in Public Law and Government from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Illinois-Urbana. She has been at her institution since it opened in 1970, demonstrating a certain shortcoming in mathematical computation abilities because she expected to stay just 3-5 years. At Oakton, she has been involved in a variety of projects, serves as executive assistant and special advisor to the president, and represents the College in a number of external organizations. Her position is eclectic and varied, and probably her portfolio is as or more diverse than that of any institutional researcher.

Dr. Bers' research interests include the community college, the assessment of student learning outcomes, and college choice for community college students and their parents. She has been president of the Association for Institutional Research, the National Community College Council for Research and Planning, and the Illinois Association for Institutional Research, and vice president of the Council for the Study of Community Colleges. Dr. Bers is former chair and currently a member of the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative Executive Committee and also serves as co-chair of the NPEC working group on student success. She is and has been a member of a number of national advisory committees, including the Kansas Study faculty productivity project, Improving Practitioner Knowledge to Improve Transfer project at the University of Missouri, and the Joint Commission on Accountability Research (JCAR). As a data facilitator with the Achieving the Dream project she works with community colleges developing new approaches to fostering student success. She was the external evaluator for a FIPSE-funded project for Loyola University, Chicago, about Community College Learning and Teaching. She is on the faculty of the Data and Decisions Workshop co-sponsored by the Association for Institutional Research, American Association of Community Colleges, and National Council for Community College Research and Planning. She has published more than more than forty-five publications in professional journals, and made more than fifty presentations at professional conferences.

For fun, she travels to new venues, attends plays and concerts, plays bridge (poorly), and has been known to cook and host dinner parties at her home. She exercises regularly, despising every moment.