Meet Tara Pearsall – Director of OIA
Meet Tara
Tara Pearsall
Director of Institutional Assessment
Office: 912.525.5878
Fax: 912.525.5858
tpearsal@scad.edu
Dr. Tara Pearsall earned her Bachelor of Music in Music Education from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ where she sang with world-renowned orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra. She then went on to earn her Masters and Doctoral degrees in Music Education at the University of South Carolina where she successfully coordinated the ongoing development, implementation, and evaluation of the only state-wide, web-based large-scale arts assessments in the country. This unique experience and expertise in arts assessment coupled with her background as a performing artist provide her a unique understanding of the challenges of measuring student learning in the arts. While at the University of South Carolina, she also served as research associate in the Office of Program Evaluation, actively participating in the planning and execution of a number of state and federally-funded program evaluation, research, and assessment projects, including the Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence-South East (COSEE-SE) funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Arts in Education Research Project (AERP) funded by the South Carolina State Department of Education (SCDE). Tara is currently serving as director of institutional assessment, where she leads the OIA team as they work closely with chairs, faculty, and staff to collaboratively, establishing “buy-in” for program-level assessment activities while at the same time promoting best practices in assessment that will further SCAD’s reputation as a leader in art and design education.
