New leadership is coming to the National Survey of Student Engagement, the influential project, based at Indiana University at Bloomington, that aims to measure how involved students are in academics and campus activities. The eight-year-old project, known as “Nessie” after its acronym, NSSE, announced today that its new director would be Alexander C. McCormick, a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching since 1998.

Mr. McCormick, who will take office in January, directed the major revision, rolled out in 2005 and 2006, of the Carnegie Foundation’s widely used classification of colleges and universities. He also served on NSSE’s Technical Advisory Panel and on the National Advisory Board of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, a companion survey.

George D. Kuh, who founded NSSE in 1999, will continue to lead the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, which houses the survey, and will remain on the faculty. “Alex has been involved with NSSE from the beginning,” Mr. Kuh said in a news release issued by the center, “and he is exceptionally well prepared to take us to the next level.” —Andrew Mytelka