Judith D. Singer

Judith D. Singer, Ph.D., is the James Bryant Conant Professor of Education and Senior Vice Provost for Faculty at Harvard University.

An internationally renowned statistician and social scientist, Singer’s scholarly interests focus on improving the quantitative methods used in social, educational, and behavioral research. She is primarily known for her contributions to the practice of multilevel modeling, survival analysis, and individual growth modeling, and to making these and other statistical methods accessible to empirical researchers. Singer's wide-ranging interests have led her to publish across a broad array of disciplines, including statistics, education, psychology, medicine, and public health. In addition to writing and co-writing nearly 100 papers and book chapters, she has also co-written three books: By Design: Planning Better Research in Higher Education and Who Will Teach: Policies that Matter (both published by Harvard University Press) and Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence (Oxford University Press), which received honorable mention from the American Publishers Association for the best mathematics and statistics book of 2003. In 2018, having chaired a National Academy of Education panel, she was the lead editor on its monograph International Education Assessments: Cautions, Conundrums, and Common Sense.

Singer is the first woman to be elected as both a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. She was also elected to the initial class of Fellows of the American Educational Research Association. In 2014, she received the Janet L. Norwood Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in the Statistical Sciences. In 2012, her nomination by President Obama to serve as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Board of Education Sciences was confirmed by the US Senate; she recently concluded her second term. She was also a founding Board member of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness.

Appointed Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) in 1984, Singer was promoted to Associate Professor in 1988 and Professor in 1993. She was named the James Bryant Conant Professor of Education in 2001. From 1999 to 2004 Singer served as academic dean of HGSE and acting dean from 2001 to 2002. She received her B.A. in Mathematics, summa cum laude, from the State University of New York at Albany in 1976 and her Ph.D. in Statistics from Harvard University in 1983.

As Senior Vice Provost, Singer works closely with the President and Provost on critical issues of faculty development across the University, with the goal of ensuring excellence in faculty ranks. She serves as a key adviser in the ad hoc tenure process, chairs the Provost’s Review Committee on Faculty Appointments, and oversees the administration of funds designated to facilitate the appointment of outstanding scholars. Working closely with colleagues across the University, Singer oversees and guides institutional policies and practices in all areas of faculty affairs.