I am an independent consultant providing research and evaluation services to public-sector and nonprofit organizations in education, labor, and international affairs. Among my recent projects are evaluations of grant-funded programs for faculty mentoring of community college students, environmental resilience in urban coastal communities, Middle East studies, and educational programs for a public historically Black university (HBCU) and another urban community college. Since 2017, I have compiled data from various federal sources on educational and career outcomes for the Humanities Indicators project (https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators) of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I am also pursuing ongoing research on higher education faculty working conditions. I am a faculty affiliate of the Department of Economics and Center for the Study of Academic Labor at Colorado State University, and was affiliated with the Maryland Population Research Center at the University of Maryland-College Park from 2018-2025.
Prior to establishing my consulting practice, I was director of research for the American Sociological Association and the American Association of University Professors. In earlier years I worked at community colleges in Montana and Virginia, and at universities in Germany and Kenya.
I hold a PhD in sociology from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wyoming.
Featured Publications
Curtis, John W., Emily R. Koren, Adrianna Kezar, K. C. Culver, Caren Arbeit, and Nicole McDermott Tate. 2024. “Faculty, Academic Careers, and Environments (FACE): Pilot Study and Field Test Report.” (https://pullias.usc.edu/download/face-pilot-study-and-field-test-report/).
Curtis, John W., Ashley N. Haines, and Nazir Barekzi. 2024. “The Impact of Community-Focused CUREs on Biology Student Identity, Persistence, and Career Outcomes at an HBCU.” Trends in Higher Education 3, no. 4: 978-992. (https://doi.org/10.3390/higheredu3040057)
Reports for the Center for the Study of Academic Labor. 2021. “Trends in Faculty Diversity, 1995-2019” (data report); “Faculty Gender Equity Indicators, 2021” (data report); “The Long-Term Trend in Contingent Academic Employment” (data report); “Faculty Diversity and Minoritized Student Outcomes: An Analysis of Institutional Factors” (working paper). (https://csal.colostate.edu/research/employment-trends/)
Experience and Skills
- Social Science Research
- Methods: Qualitative and quantitative methods
- Topics: Higher education, labor, gender equity in employment
- Technical Skills
- Data analysis: SAS, SPSS, Stata, R
- Language: German