Project Team

Michael Kirst is Professor Emeritus of Education and Business Administration at Stanford University. He has been on the Stanford faculty since 1969. Dr. Kirst received his Ph.D. in political economy and government from Harvard. Before joining the Stanford University faculty, Dr. Kirst held several positions with the federal government, including Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Manpower, Employment and Poverty, and Director of Program Planning and Evaluation for the Bureau of Elementary and Secondary Education in the U.S. Office of Education (now the U.S. Department of Education). Kirst was recently appointed president of the California State Board of Education in 2011, a position he also held from 1977 to 1981. He is also a member of both the National Academy of Education and the International Academy of Education. His book From High School to College, with Andrea Venezia, was published by Jossey Bass in 2004.

Mitchell L. Stevens is Associate Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University. He is an organizational sociologist with longstanding interests in the quantification of educational processes, alternative educational forms, and the formal organization of knowledge. He is the author of Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites (Harvard, 2007). In addition to the ecology project, he is at work on a large-scale study of how U.S. universities organize research and instruction on world regions. He also serves as Director of the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (SCANCOR).

W. Richard (Dick) Scott received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. He came to Stanford in 1960 where he is now Professor Emeritus of Sociology with courtesy appointments in the Schools of Business, Education, and Medicine. He is an organizational sociologist who has concentrated his work on the study of professional organizations (e.g., educational, engineering, research, medical). During the past two decades, he has concentrated his research on the relation between organizations and their institutional environments. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, and has served on many research and advisory boards in the Department of HHS, National Academy of Sciences, National Institute of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, and National Science Foundation. He has also served as the editor of the Annual Review of Sociology, and as President of the Sociological Research Association.

Tom Ehrlich is Visiting Professor at the Stanford University School of Education. He has previously served as president of Indiana University, provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and dean of the Stanford Law School. He was also the first president of the Legal Services Corporation in Washington, DC, and the first director of the International Development Cooperation Agency, reporting to President Carter. After his tenure at Indiana University, he was a Distinguished University Scholar at California State University and taught regularly at San Francisco State University. From 2000 to 2010 he was a Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He is author, co-author, or editor of 12 books, including Reconnecting Education and Foundations: Turning Good Intentions into Educational Capital (2007), and Educating for Democracy: Preparing Undergraduates for Lives of Responsible Political Engagement (2007). He is currently working on a book about integrating liberal learning into undergraduate business education. He is a trustee of Mills College, and has been a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and Bennett College. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and holds five honorary degrees.  

Eric Bettinger is Associate Professor at the Stanford University School of Education. His research interests include economics of education; student success and completion in college; teacher characteristics and student success in college; effects of voucher programs on both academic and non-academic outcomes. Eric is also studying what factors determine student success in college. Eric's work aims to bring understanding of these cause-and-effect relationships in higher education. His most recent work focuses on the effects of FAFSA simplification on students' collegiate outcomes.

Kristopher Proctor is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the School of Education at Stanford University. His research has explored curricular changes in U.S. higher education institutions since 1970. His current research focuses on the responsiveness of higher education institutions to environmental pressures in forming particular degree programs. Prior to arriving at Stanford University, he previously served as the Data Collection Manager for the Colleges & Universities 2000 Project at the University of California, Riverside.

Daniel Klasik, Doctoral Research Assistant

Rachel Baker, Doctoral Research Assistant

Betsy Williams, Doctoral Research Assistant

Justin Nguyen, Project Administrator

Hiep Ho, Communications Specialist