Brayton Smith, Ph.D.

Dr. Brayton Smith serves as Director of Assessment and Evaluation for IWU Online, where he leads institutional assessment, program review, and evaluation infrastructure supporting accreditation and institutional effectiveness across multiple academic schools. He designed and built the university's automated program review process, a Power Automate and Power BI workflow that gathers core performance indicators and delivers them to program leadership on schedule, saving three academic schools hundreds of staff hours each year. He chairs the CAPS Assessment Committee and was awarded IWU's Heavy Lifter Award in 2025 for rebuilding the assessment data infrastructure and preserving accreditation continuity.

Dr. Smith earned his Ph.D. in Business Administration with a concentration in Supply Chain and Logistics from Liberty University and his MBA from IWU's DeVoe School of Business, Technology and Leadership. Before entering higher education, he spent nearly a decade in transportation and logistics leadership, managing $60 million in annual freight revenue for a major manufacturing account, supervising teams of up to 350 CDL drivers, and building pricing strategy for a national freight brokerage. He holds a Six Sigma Black Belt and continues to consult on operations and technical architecture for trucking and brokerage firms.

Alongside his administrative role, Dr. Smith teaches as adjunct faculty in data analytics and artificial intelligence and serves as an investigator on two IRB-approved studies examining why adult learners withdraw and how students engage with faculty feedback. He is a lifelong Marion resident, a father of three, and a member and guest preacher at Harvest Bible Chapel.