AIR Names Michael Kirsch New Chief Operating Officer and Announces Larry Hedges As New Institute Fellow
Washington, D.C. – Dr. Michael Kirsch, recognized for his strategic and analytical expertise, has been named Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the American Institutes for Research (AIR), and Dr. Larry V. Hedges, a researcher in statistical methods for meta-analysis and evaluation, has been selected as an Institute Fellow at AIR.
AIR President and Chief Executive Officer David Myers made both announcements on February 25, 2014 and welcomed the expertise both individuals bring to AIR, a not-for-profit organization that is one of the world’s largest behavioral and social science research and evaluation organizations.
Prior to joining AIR, Kirsch was senior vice president for the Labor and Human Services Division of IMPAQ International, a social science, research and evaluation firm based in Columbia, Md. He oversaw business development, project execution and staff development. Key clients included the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Agriculture. Trained as an industrial organizational psychologist, Kirsch also served as president of TATC Consulting and worked for Ernst and Young, Booz Allen Hamilton, and University Research Corporation.
Besides supporting four AIR programs, Kirsch will align corporate and program planning for all AIR professional services programs and implement a shared approach to quality, project management, and workforce and resource planning.
Hedges is the Board of Trustees Professor of Statistics, Education and Social Policy, and Psychology at Northwestern University and Director of the IPR Q-Center. His many appointments and honors include serving on the Board of Directors of the national board for Education Sciences and as president of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness. He is also a prolific writer, having written more than 200 publications; the most recent of the eight books to his credit is The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis (with H. Cooper and J. Valentine, 2009).
While maintaining his appointment and duties at Northwestern University, Hedges will work with AIR on several topics involving statistical and research methods. He is best known for developing statistical methods for meta-analysis, the backbone of much evidence-based social science research. His broad interests span the costs of systematic reviews, differences between boys and girls in mental test scores, the black/white gap in achievement test scores, and frameworks for international comparative education studies. He is also an expert on education measurement and the design and analysis of rigorous experiments.
About AIR
Established in 1946, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., the American Institutes for Research (AIR) is a nonpartisan not-for-profit organization that conducts behavioral and social science research and delivers technical assistance both domestically and internationally in the areas of health, education and workforce productivity. For more information, visit www.air.org.
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