About Us

WSLS Leadership

Sara Goldrick-Rab (Co-Director)
Douglas N. Harris (Co-Director)

Aaron Brower (Co-Principal Investigator)
Christopher Taber (Co-Principal Investigator)

Biographies

Sara Goldrick-Rab is assistant professor of educational policy studies and sociology at UW-Madison. She is also the Senior Scholar at the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, and an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty, the LaFollette School of Public Affairs, and the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research. A sociologist of higher education, her research explores policies aimed at reducing socioeconomic and racial inequalities. Dr. Goldrick-Rab was named a 2010 William T. Grant Scholar for her project "Rethinking College Choice in America." She was also a 2004 Rising Scholar in Higher Education by the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good and a 2006 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellow. She is the co-author of Putting Poor People to Work: How the Work-First Idea Eroded College Access the Poor (Russell Sage, 2006), which was a finalist for the C. Wright Mills award. Her research has been published in journals such as Sociology of Education and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and been financially supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Spencer Foundation, American Educational Research Association, William T. Grant Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Association for Institutional Research, and the Mellon Foundation. She consults regularly with the Center for American Progress, the Brookings Institution, the Community College Research Center, Mathematica Policy Research, the Workforce Strategy Center, and the Consortium for Chicago School Research, among others. Dr. Goldrick-Rab holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.. Download photo

Douglas N. Harris is associate professor of educational policy studies and public affairs at UW-Madison.He is an economist whose research explores how K–12 and higher education policies influence students’ educational and labor market outcomes, using quasi-experimental research methods and cost analysis. He has published numerous articles on the cost-effectiveness of educational policies including, most recently, his work on cost-effectiveness benchmarks was recently accepted for publication in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. He was chair and lead organizer of the 2008 National Conference on Value-Added Modeling, bringing together top economists, statisticians, and sociologists to examine this new panel data econometric technique. Dr. Harris is also principal investigator on two USDOE -funded applications of quasi-experimental techniques. He is a regular consultant to USDOE on the evaluation of experimental and quasi-experimental research proposals and advises organizations such as the Educational Testing Service, National Academy of Sciences, National Conference of State Legislatures, and RAND. Dr. Harris earned his doctorate in economics at Michigan State University. Download photo

Christopher Taber joined the UW-Madison faculty in fall 2007 as the Richard A. Meese Chair of Applied Econometrics. He was previously on the faculty at Northwestern University. His research focuses on the development and implementation of econometric models of skill formation. His work on the economics of education includes quasi-experimental studies of the effectiveness of the importance of borrowing constraints in college going decisions, general equilibrium models of the labor market, as well as analysis of the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) experiment, one of the largest social experiments ever conducted with over 21,000 participants. He has been editor-in-chief of the Journal of Labor Economics since October 2007. Dr. Taber holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago.

Aaron Brower is vice provost for teaching and learning and professor of social work at UW-Madison. Brower has published widely in the areas of college student success and culture, high-risk drinking, residential learning communities, and social cognition. In 2006, Brower completed a 10-year project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation addressing high-risk college student drinking. Brower was also the co-investigator for a $10 million, National Science Foundation–funded national higher education center that is infusing learning community principles into the training of graduate students in the sciences. Dr. Brower earned his doctorate in social work and psychology at the University of Michigan.

Project Manager

Alison Bowman

Post-Doctoral Research Assistants

James Benson
Julie Minikel-Lacocque

Graduate Research Assistants

Derria Byrd, Department of Educational Policy Studies
Frank Honts, Department of Educational Policy Studies
Courtney Luedke, Department of Sociology
Robert Kelchen, Department of Economics
Peter Kinsley, Department of Educational Policy Studies
Tim St. Louis, Department of Educational Policy Studies

University of Wisconsin Survey Center

John Stevenson, Executive Director
Lisa Klein, Project Coordinator