Clifton F. Conrad

Clifton F. Conrad has been Professor of Higher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1987. He previously taught at the University of Denver (1975-1977), The College of William and Mary (1977-1981), and the University of Arizona (1981-1987)—where he also served as a Department Chair and as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. His research program is centered on college and university curriculum—at the undergraduate and graduate levels, in the liberal arts and sciences as well as in professional fields. Books that he has authored or co-authored include The Undergraduate Curriculum, A Silent Success: Master's Education in the United States, and Emblems of Quality in Higher Education: Developing and Sustaining High-Quality Programs. While he has published quantitative studies in journals such as the American Educational Research Journal and the Journal of Education Finance, the majority of his research has been fueled by qualitative approaches to inquiry—work that appears in journals ranging from Sociology of Education to the Journal of Higher Education. A former President of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, since 1980 he has been a key expert witness and consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office of Civil Rights (U.S. Department of Education) in major civil rights cases and inquiries involving race and gender in higher education in nine states. Two of these cases led to landmark decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, including one in which his scholarship was cited approvingly.