IDHE Research Advisory Board

IDHE has a research advisory board consisting of higher education and political science researchers.  Some of these board members have also served as IDHE Visiting Scholars in the past. 

Cassie Barnhardt
University of Iowa
Assistant Professor

Dr. Barnhardt’s expertise includes campus climate and inclusion, civic engagement, higher education, student activism / campus mobilization, and Student affairs.

Jodi Benenson
University of Nebraska at Omaha
Assistant Professor, School of Public Administration

Dr. Benenson researches the intersection between civic engagement, nonprofit organizations, inequality, and social policy. Previously, Jodi was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. At Tufts, she worked on several projects in the areas of youth civic engagement, political learning and engagement in higher education, and national service and employment.

Elizabeth Bennion
Indiana University South Bend
Professor, Department of Political Science

Dr. Bennion teaches American politics and conducts randomized field experiments and other research on effective approaches to civic learning and democratic engagement. She is the founding director of IUSB’s American Democracy Project, host of WNIT Public Television's weekly program Politically Speaking, and co-editor of Teaching Civic Engagement: From Student to Active Citizen and Teaching Civic Engagement Across the Disciplines.

Margaret Brower
University of Chicago

Ph.D. Candidate // Urban Fellow

Margaret Brower is an Urban Doctoral Fellow focusing on the public opinions and political behaviors of marginalized U.S. subgroups with specific attention to how intersectional, social identities complicate and can explain differences in these outcomes. Prior to her doctoral program, she worked for the Institute for Higher Education and Democracy at Tufts University, where she was instrumental in establishing the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement and conducted qualitative research on college student political learning and engagement.

Bernard L. Fraga
Indiana University
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science

Dr. Fraga researches American electoral politics, race and ethnic politics, and political behavior. Broadly, he studies how social identities and electoral contexts impact individual political behavior. His 2018 book The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity, and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America is a comprehensive analysis of race and voter turnout, which guides IDHE’s approach to studying equity and electoral participation.

Eitan Hersh
Tufts University
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science

Dr. Hersh teaches and researches American politics. He studies civic participation and the relationship between election rules, strategies, and the behavior of voters. Much of his work utilizes large databases of personal records to study political behavior.

Sunshine Hillygus
Duke University
Professor, Department of Political Science

Dr. Hillygus is the director of the Initiative on Survey Methodology at Duke University. She has published widely on the topics of American political behavior, campaigns and elections, survey methods, public opinion, and information technology and politics. 

Jillian Kinzie
Indiana University
Associate Director, NSSE

Dr. Kinzie conducts research and leads project activities on effective use of student engagement data to improve educational quality and serves as senior scholar with the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) project.

Peter Levine
Tufts University
Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs, Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life

Dr. Levine was the founding deputy director (2001-2006) and then the second director (2006-2015) of Tisch College’s CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. In addition, he co-leads the Civic Studies major, teaches the Summer Institute of Civic Studies, and organizes the annual Frontiers of Democracy conference. He has published extensively on civic renewal, democratic deliberation, and political philosophy.

Bridget Terry Long
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Dean and Saris Professor of Education and Economics

Dr. Long is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a member of the National Academy of Education. Her research focuses on college student access and choice and the factors that influence students' postsecondary and labor market outcomes.

Demetri Morgan
Loyola University Chicago
Assistant Professor, School of Education

Dr. Morgan studies the purpose and responsibilities of higher education in a diverse democracy. His work advances understanding about how colleges and universities create campus climates that build the cultural competencies of students in order to foster lifelong civic and political engagement.

Doug Shapiro
National Student Clearinghouse
Executive Research Director

Dr. Shapiro is the executive research director at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. He oversees the center’s reports, strategies, and delivery of its public service mission. He is an expert in the uses of postsecondary student data for academic and policy research, program evaluation, institutional effectiveness, and strategic planning.

Alexander Wagner
Emory University
Director of Research Data Analytics

Mr. Wagner brings his experience in higher education institutional research to advise IDHE on institutional data practices, campus climate considerations, and bringing civic learning to the attention of leaders as a measurable outcome.

Anne Weiss
Purdue University
Assistant Director of 
Institutional Data Analytics + Assessment

Anne Weiss has researched empirical questions about the public mission of higher education, students' civic learning and development, and the institutionalization of highly engaged teaching and learning practices.