Economics
Jeffrey Smith, Paul T. Heyne Distinguished Chair in Economics
Current research: Program evaluation methodology, college quality and match
Training roles: Teaches public economics, econometrics and program evaluation
Chris Taber, Professor, Walker Family Distinguished Chair
Current research: Labor Economics, Applied Econometrics, Public Economics.
Training roles: Teaches labor economics and econometrics
Matthew Wiswall, Professor
Current research: Applied econometrics, education and demographic economics
Training roles: Teaches econometrics and public finance
Political Science
David Weimer, Professor, Political Science and Public Affairs
Current research: Study of charter schools in high- and low-choice districts; research on Internet survey methodology, effect of school quality on housing prices.
Training roles: Teaches quantitative methods in political science, trains students on statistical analysis for policy research.
Psychology
Martha Alibali, Professor, ITP Director
Current research: Children’s development of mathematical reasoning; integration of language and gesture in instructional communication.
Training roles: Teaching and advising on cognitive development; supervises Cognitive Development and Communication lab; awarded Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, 2004.
Markus Brauer, Professor
Current research: Group and inter-group processes
Training roles: Teaches design and analysis of psychological experiments
Judith Harackiewicz, Paul Pintrich Professor
Current research: Longitudinal studies of achievement goals, values and optimal motivation in high school and college education; experimental studies of competition, goals, values and the development of interest.
Training roles: Teaching and advising on achievement motivation and experimental methods; supervises Intrinsic Motivation lab; awarded Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, 2002.
Mark Seidenberg, Vilas Professor and Donald O. Hebb Professor, Psychology and Neuroscience
Current research: Use of language and its bases in the brain using computational models; empirical research on reading and dyslexia, including behavioral studies, large-scale computational models, and neuroimaging studies.
Training roles: Teaches and advises on cognitive processes in reading, psycholinguistics, experimental methods, simulation models.
Social Work
Katherine Magnuson, Professor
Current research: Effects of socioeconomic disadvantage, particularly low levels of parental education, on child and family well-being; the effects of early education on children’s school readiness.
Training roles: Teaches and advises on child development and family processes, research methods, the effects of socioeconomic policies on families and children.
Alejandra Ros Pilarz, Assistant Professor
Current research: Work, family and public policy and the intersection of child well-being; quantitative analyses of longitudinal data
Training roles: Teaches social policy and impacts on children
Sociology
Eric Grodsky, Professor, ITP Deputy Director
Current research: The role of higher education in social stratification; education and health inequalities over the life course; early childhood education
Training roles: Teaching and advising on sociology of education, stratification, quantitative methods.
Felix Elwert, Romnes Professor
Current research: Focuses on neighborhood effects, social demography, mortality, and statistical methods of causal inference for the social sciences.
Training roles: Teaches Causality: Mathematical and Statistical Applications in Sociology, and courses on demography, marriage and the family.
Education Leadership and Policy Analysis
Nicholas Hillman, Associate Professor
Current research: Higher education finance and policy
Training roles: Teaches higher education finance, education policy, quantitative research methods
Mollie T. McQuillan, Assistant Professor
Current research: Educational policy adoption and implementation processes; program evaluation; social determinants of health; the development and health of gender-expansive youth
Training roles: Teaches research methods in educational policy analysis and applied statistics
Educational Policy Studies
Amy Claessens, Associate Professor, Gulbrandson Distinguished Chair in Early Childhood Education
Current research: Early childhood education, mathematics skill development, child development
Training roles: Teaches early childhood development and public policy
Ran Liu, Assistant Professor
Current research: Gender inequality and intersectionality in STEM education; applying machine learning methods to identify heterogeneous treatment effects using observational data
Training roles: Introduction to survey design
Taylor Odle, Assistant Professor
Current research: College access and success; educational inequality and economic opportunity; applied program evaluation in education; research-practice partnerships
Training roles: Teaches economics of education, higher education policy, and cost-effectiveness/benefit-cost analysis
Educational Psychology
Daniel Bolt, Professor
Current research: Theory and application of psychometric methods in education and psychology
Training roles: Teaches test construction, scaling, factor and cluster analysis
David Kaplan, Patricia Busk Professor of Quantitative Methods
Current research: Bayesian statistical inference, multi-model inference, applications to large-scale educational assessments.
Training roles: Teaching courses on structural equation modeling and Bayesian inference. Advising on dissertations.
Jee-Seon Kim, Professor
Current research: Development and application of quantitative methods for modeling change, learning, and human development, longitudinal data analysis, issues of omitted variables and multiple imputation, using multilevel and other latent variable models.
Training roles: Teaching courses on hierarchical linear modeling, experimental design, longitudinal data analysis, and latent variable modeling. Advising on theses and dissertations.
Percival Matthews, Associate Professor
Current research: How symbol systems support mathematical cognition, investigating children's understanding of the equal sign, mechanisms governing human symbolic capacities.
Training roles: Teaching courses on development of mathematical thinking, childhood development.
James Pustejovsky, Associate Professor
Current research: Development of statistical methods for problems in education, psychology, and social science research with a focus on methods related to research synthesis and meta-analysis.
Training roles: Teaching courses on meta-analysis, statistical methods for causal inference in experimental and quasi-experimental contexts
Program Leadership
Project Director:
Martha Alibali
Deputy Director:
Eric Grodsky
Program Manager:
Grace Jensen
Steering Committee
Amy Claessens
Mollie McQuillan
James Pustejovsky
Alejandra Ros Pilarz
David Weimer
Matthew Wiswall