Bernadette Howlett

Director of Faculty Operations Research

Dr. Howlett has led research analytics in higher education for nearly 20 years with an emphasis in online education. She has received numerous federal research awards and has published extensively. She currently directs the analyst team that will perform the present study.

Samuel Karpen

Senior Research Scientist

Sam is a Research Scientist and Western Governors University (WGU) where he studies outreach to non-traditional students. Prior to WGU, he worked as Director of Assessment at the East Tennessee State University College of Pharmacy and the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine. He has published steadily in education, health science, and psychology journals over the last 15 years.

Tom Wagner

Senior Director of Learning Analytics

Tom has led product and analytics teams at SunGard Higher Education (now part of Ellucian, the largest software applications provider in higher ed) where he built their first SaaS product, and at InsideTrack (now part of Strada Education Foundation), as well as at Stamps.com and Kinko’s (now Fedex Office).

Samantha West

Lead Learning Analyst

Samantha has a Bachelors in Mathematics and Statistics (University of Utah) and an MS in Data Analytics (WGU) and is deeply familiar with WGU’s learning resource and assessment data. Before WGU she was a Text Analytics Developer for InMoment (a Customer Experience software vendor)