Terry Ackerman, University of Iowa
After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Ackerman worked for five years as a psychometrician at ACT where one of his primary responsibilities involved working on an Office of Naval Research grant that focused on multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) and its potential applications to standardized tests. Given his strong interest and passion for teaching, he then left ACT and went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he taught graduate courses in statistics and testing and measurement. During that time, Dr. Ackerman was fortunate to have great colleagues and mentors at Illinois including Dr. William Stout, Dr. Rod McDonald, and Dr. Larry Hubert. His research continued to focus on MIRT and expanded to include differential item and test functioning. After 10 years at Illinois he moved to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where, as a department chair, he helped build a strong program in educational testing and measurement and developed a strong internship program. He chaired and sat on several technical advisory committees for several testing companies including the American Institute for Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Measured Progress, the College Board, ETS, and the Defense Advisory Committee, which oversaw the testing for the U.S. military. During his 17 years as a professor, chair, and associate dean, Dr. Ackerman was elected to serve as the president of the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) and the Psychometric Society. In 2016, he briefly returned to ACT as the company’s first Lindquist Chair before moving to the University of Iowa as a Distinguished Visiting Professor.