Skip to main content

Kevin L. Brown

Pronouns: He/Him

Vice President
Kevin has expertise in STEM education and program evaluation.

Kevin currently serves as vice president in The Bridge at NORC. He has worked at NORC in various capacities since 2004, including as director of NORC’s Center for Advancing Research & Communication in STEM.

The STEM Center was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support the Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE) program as it worked to improve instruction, and learning, in and outside of formal classroom settings. Kevin’s responsibilities as project director included assessing the technical assistance needs of REESE projects, coordinating the delivery of such assistance, developing activities to build a REESE community, disseminating information about REESE projects via the STEM Center website, and managing special evaluative studies led by primary investigator (PI) Barbara Schneider, including a quasi-experimental evaluation of the impact of NSF funding on the productivity of REESE PIs. Kevin also served in a similar capacity for the Data Research and Development Center, funded by NSF to support the Interagency Education Research Initiative (IERI), and, is the evaluator of the NSF support center (CIRCL) for the Cyberlearning and Future of Learning Technologies (CFLT) program.

Other evaluation projects led by Kevin include a multi-year social network analysis of NSF’s Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES) initiative, a quantitative assessment of the impact of the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund (ICF), evaluations of two graduate student training programs at the University of Chicago, and the qualitative component of NORC’s contract with the U.S. Department of Education to evaluate the Growth Model Pilot Program (GMPP). He also managed evaluations of the Center for Education (CFE) at the National Academies and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Program on Workplace, Workforce, and Working Families and served as the senior advisor on NORC’s Evaluation of the Undergraduate STEM Interventions with Industry (USI2) Consortium Program. Kevin currently directs the NIH-funded Chicago Health and Activity in Real-Time (CHART) project, led by University of Michigan professor Kathleen Cagney, which builds on his expertise using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) first employed in an NSF-funded study of Gendered Differences in STEM Persistence. Other methods that Kevin has used for evaluation and research purposes include statistical analysis of website usage data and the incorporation of local sensor data in neighborhood survey research. He received in doctorate in Sociology at the University of Chicago.

Education

PhD

University of Chicago

MA

University of Chicago

BS

Baylor University

Appointments & Affiliations

Advisory Board

Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences

Advisory Board

Center for Advancing Research in Informal Science Education

Project Contributions

Feeding America’s Child & Family Choice Program

The first rigorous assessment of increasing choice for food pantries and the families they serve

Client:

Feeding America National Office (FANO)

Evaluating Data “Bootcamp” for Biology Grad Students

NORC helps UChicago faculty assess the value of an immersive week at Woods Hole

Client:

University of Chicago

Examining Gendered Differences in STEM Persistence

Using ESM to help understand women’s attrition from STEM majors and careers

Funder:

National Science Foundation

Chicago Health and Activity in Real-Time (CHART)

The first-ever study documenting how activity spaces change as people age

Client:

The National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health

National Institute for Theory & Mathematics in Biology Evaluation

Assessing the impact of the first national center devoted to bridging mathematics and biology

Client:

National Science Foundation

Publications