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College of Education

Stephen Porter

SP
Stephen Porter

Professor of Higher Education

Poe Hall 616A

515-428-0008
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Bio

Dr. Stephen Porter is a Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at North Carolina State University, where he teaches graduate courses on applied statistics and causal inference. He earned his Ph.D. in political science, with a concentration in econometrics, from the University of Rochester. Before entering academia, Dr. Porter spent a decade in university administration, culminating in his role as Director of Institutional Research at Wesleyan University.

Dr. Porter’s research focuses on student success, with an emphasis on evaluation using methods for causal inference, and survey methodology. His extensive body of work, cited over 8,000 times, has been supported by funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, the Lumina Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Walton Family Foundation.

In addition to his research, Dr. Porter has served on the editorial boards of seven journals, including American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness. His expertise has led to chairing multiple grant review panels for the Institute of Education Sciences. Dr. Porter has held visiting scholar positions at both the Center of Excellence for Complex Data Analysis and the Education and Workforce Development division at RTI International, as well as the Center for the Studies of Higher Education at Nagoya University, Japan. Additionally, he has consulted for the 2016 and 2020 National Postsecondary Student Aid Studies.

Selected Scholarly Publications

Courses Taught

  •  ED 710 – Applied Quantitative Methods in Education I
  •  ED 711 – Applied Quantitative Methods in Education II
  •  ED 714 – Workflow of Data Analysis
  •  ED 795 – Causal Inference in Educational Research

Education

Doctor of Philosophy Political Science University of Rochester 1996

Master of Arts Political Science University of Rochester 1995

Bachelor of Arts Political Science Rice University 1987

Area(s) of Expertise

Current research focuses on student success, with an emphasis on evaluation using quasi-experimental methods, and survey methods, particularly the validity of college student survey questions.

Groups