Brenda LeMaster

Brenda LeMaster is a Professor of Professional Practice. She has nearly 30 years of experience in cooperative education, including past service as the Associate Director of the University of Cincinnati’s Professional Practice Program. She has worked with students in three UC colleges including Engineering, Business, and Arts and Sciences. Prior to coming to UC she spent several years in the co-op program at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Prof. LeMaster currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal for Cooperative Education and Internships. She has held numerous positions in national cooperative education organizations and is past Chair of the Cooperative Education Division of the American Society for Engineering Education. In 2001 she received the prestigious Alvah K. Borman Award for contributions to the national field of cooperative education. She served as a reader for Title VIII grants for the U.S. Department of Education, and was a founding member of the Board of the Accreditation Council for Cooperative Education. She has served as a peer reviewer for NASA research and education proposals and for research grants for both the Cooperative Education and Internship Association and the Cooperative Education Division of the American Society for Engineering Education. She served as a consultant/evaluator for the North Central Association/Higher Learning Commission and as a site visitor of the New England regional accreditation association as well as having consulted with programs of cooperative education around the country.

LeMaster’s presentations and publications focus on cooperative education, measuring learning outcomes, accreditation, assessment, and leadership. Most recently she co-authored a chapter in The Handbook for Research in Cooperative Education and Internships. She was one of the founding board members of the Women's Leadership Program at the University of Cincinnati and the multi-university Higher Education Collaborative for Women's Leadership Development of Greater Cincinnati

In addition to her work in cooperative education, LeMaster served in several university-level administrative positions. As Acting Vice Provost for Academic Affairs she played a major role in the preparation for regional reaccreditation including responsibility for assessment of student learning. As Vice Provost for Institutional Effectiveness she was responsible for re-organizing the Office of Institutional Research, administering a university-wide student satisfaction assessment as well as the first administration of the National Survey for Student Engagement(NSSE) at the University of Cincinnati. In this role LeMaster was also responsible for developing centralized systems for monitoring and supporting accreditation activities across campus. As Director of the Division of Adult and Continuing Education, Prof. LeMaster developed the Adult Learning Center, a central unit responsible for serving the adult student population at UC, and providing credit assessment activities for prior learning. She also supervised the centralized continuing education programs of Communiversity and the Institute for Learning in Retirement(now known as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Cincinnati.)