Chadia Abras

Senior Director of Institutional Assessment

Chadia Abras, Ph.D. joined the Provost’s Office in July 2019 as Johns Hopkins University’s inaugural Director of Institutional Assessment. In this role, Dr. Abras collaborates with a variety of institutional stakeholders to support quality student learning by assisting academic programs in developing and refining assessment plans, meeting the goals of defined learning outcomes, and encouraging a culture of learner-centered education. She plays a key role in ensuring ongoing compliance with standards of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education by promoting institutional effectiveness and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Dr. Abras leads the implementation of the University’s first shared Assessment Management System (AMS) and the Comprehensive Learner Record (JHU CLR) an innovative digital transcript that provides a verifiable, digital record documenting a student’s entire learning journey. She also serves as the Chairperson of the University Council for Learning Assessment.

Dr. Abras is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education where she served as the associate dean of accreditation, assessment, and technology. In this role, Dr. Abras oversaw reevaluation and rebuilding of SOE’s assessment systems and processes, leading the school through a successful reaccreditation by the Maryland State Department of Education. A faculty member in SOE since 2011, Dr. Abras’ expertise is in online learning communities, communities of practice, guidelines for success in e-learning communities, learning assessment, and educational technology. She has conducted research and published on heuristics of success for online communities of interest, online learning communities and distance-learning best practices. Dr. Abras has authored book chapters and published articles on The Comprehensive Learner Record vision, co-curricular learning, assessment innovative practices and grand challenges, online communities, distance learning, effective educational strategies and user-centered designs and presented regionally and internationally on distance learning and assessment topics.

Dr. Abras earned her B.A. in Modern Languages and Linguistics from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, M.S. in French Literature from the University of Maryland, and Ph.D. in Language Literacy and Culture from the University of Maryland Baltimore County.