Abby Langham named executive director for Administrative Effectiveness at Auburn University

Following an external search, Abbygail (Abby) Langham, director of assessment and strategic planning in Student Affairs at Auburn University, has been named the university’s first executive director for Administrative Effectiveness, effective Oct. 1. 

As a member of the Office of Administrative Effectiveness leadership team, Langham will lead and oversee the mission of the office to actively support quality assessment of units, programs and services to provide evidence of continuous improvement. She will provide leadership for all assessment and effectiveness efforts for administrative and co-curricular campus units. 

An accomplished administrator, Langham brings over 16 years of extensive assessment, strategic planning, institutional research and administrative leadership experience to the executive director position. For the past 10 1/2 years, she has held the inaugural Director of Assessment and Strategic Planning position in Student Affairs at Auburn. In that role, she led the division’s efforts for strategic planning, program review, annual reporting and the assessment of co-curricular outcomes supporting the institution's Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) accreditation. Her work fostering a “Culture of Evidence” (Spurlock & Johnston, 2012) included building a shared assessment dialogue across departments while strengthening staff members’ assessment and planning capacities.

In addition, Langham holds graduate faculty status and teaches master’s and doctoral-level courses in the Administration of Higher Education program and the Educational Research Methods and Analysis program in the Department of Educational Foundations, Leadership and Technology in Auburn’s College of Education. Outside of her full-time work and teaching responsibilities, Langham is often called on to consult and facilitate assessment and strategic planning activities both at Auburn and beyond.  

Recognized for her data-informed approaches to planning and decision-making, Langham represented Student Affairs as a 2023 Leadership Lee County class graduate. She was elected and currently serves the international professional association NASPA as a Womxn in Student Affairs Knowledge Community co-chair and she has served as a board member and president of NASPA-Alabama. NASPA-Alabama recognized Langham with the Outstanding Service to Region III Award in 2020.

Langham’s demonstrated ability to provide vision, leadership and supervision resulted in establishing an award-winning sustained culture of assessment for Student Affairs with the Campus Labs (now Anthology) All-Star Award in 2017. In addition, Langham regularly contributes to her field through peer-reviewed presentations and publications.

“Dr. Langham comes to this important new position as a subject-matter expert in her field, with a wide breadth and depth of experience, institutional knowledge and campus partnerships. Her strong commitment to Auburn University and demonstrated track record for success will make all the difference. I am highly confident that Abby will provide strong leadership to all facets of AU’s nonacademic assessment and effectiveness work,” said Emmett Winn, associate vice president for Administrative Effectiveness. ”She is an effective administrator who can cultivate synergies across campus units, an essential skill as we wrap up our decennial SACSCOC accreditation reaffirmation process and plan for the future.”

Langham joined Auburn in 2013 after serving as an institutional researcher in the Office of Planning and Analysis at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She also has worked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Center for Educational Leadership. 

As executive director, Langham will play a key role in developing data-informed strategies for administrative units that support the institution’s accreditation, assessment, strategic planning and data-management efforts. 

”The opportunity to establish this new assessment office on my alma mater’s campus is thrilling. I look forward to applying the experiences I will bring with me from establishing the Student Affairs Assessment and Strategic Planning office when supporting the university in this new work with AU’s administrative units,” Langham said.

Langham holds a doctorate in educational leadership with a minor in higher education administration from UAB. She is an Auburn alumna at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, with a master’s in public administration and a bachelor’s in history.