WCER names new director

Adam Gamoran, professor of sociology and educational policy studies, has been selected as director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research in the School of Education.

Gamoran, who has been interim director of WCER since August, joined the UW–Madison faculty in 1984 after earning his Ph.D. in education from the University of Chicago, where he also received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

He has been a faculty associate at WCER since 1985 and a faculty affiliate at UW–Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty since 1990. He chaired the Department of Sociology from 2001-2004, and over the years has served on numerous departmental and campuswide committees.

He was elected in 2001 to the prestigious National Academy of Education. He is a member of the American Sociological Association, the American Educational Research Association, the International Sociological Association and the National Society for the Study of Education. Gamoran has served on the editorial boards of several professional journals and has been a visiting professor at universities in Israel and Scotland.

Established in 1964, WCER is one of the nation’s oldest, largest and most influential university-based education research and development centers, and is among the largest research units on the UW–Madison campus. Its current annual external funding totals $23.65 million — with 62 percent from the National Science Foundation, 22 percent from the U.S. Department of Education, 9 percent from other federal sources, 6 percent from private sources and 1.5 percent from the state of Wisconsin.

Gamoran succeeds Andrew Porter, former professor of educational psychology, who took a position at Vanderbilt University. Porter led WCER from 1988-2003.