UWSC Project Staff

The UW Survey Center retains an excellent, highly trained project staff including project directors, programmers, and business staff, ensuring that every project moves smoothly from inception to completion.

John Stevenson

Associate Director

Please contact John with questions about UWSC's research services or to obtain a cost proposal.

Phone: (608) 262-9032

Email: stevenso@ssc.wisc.edu

To view John's bio click here

Steve Bochte

Programmer

Steve joined the UWSC as a CATI interviewer in 2006. As a member of the programming team, he writes electronic survey instruments, prepares data for delivery, and helps troubleshoot and maintain the UWSC's workstations and servers.

Steve has a bachelor's degree in Spanish literature from the UW-Madison and is pursuing his CCNA and CCNP certifications.

Phone: (608) 262-5261

Email: sbochte@ssc.wisc.edu

Bob Cradock

Project Director

Bob started at the Survey Center in 1991 and worked as an interviewer, project director, and database administrator until 1999. Before rejoining the Survey Center in 2003, he was a researcher in the UW Medical School's Center for Health Policy & Program Evaluation. He has experience with mail, CATI, CAPI, and focus group studies.

He is directing a variety of projects including the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey (for the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, and Centers for Disease Control), the Asthma Follow-up to the BRFSS, and the Department of Workforce Development's survey of Job Center participants. He has managed studies of employee assistance programs, organic food buying, entrepreneurship, foster care, mercury consumption, and student satisfaction.

Bob has bachelor's degrees in sociology and chemistry from Rice University, and a master's degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with concentrations in social psychology and sociology of science.

Phone: (608) 265-9885

Email: rcradock@ssc.wisc.edu

Ken Croes

Project Director

Ken joined the UWSC in 2003 as a telephone interviewer and served as a phone room shift leader from 2004 to 2005. From 2005 to 2008, he supervised the UWSC's Mail and Data Entry department.

A project director since 2008, Ken oversees mail, Web, and telephone survey research projects. He specializes in qualitative methods, including focus group facilitation and analysis, in-depth interviewing, and coding of narrative data.

Ken's recent projects include stakeholder interviews for the Wisconsin Partnership Program Evaluation; a Web survey for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services on the adoption of heath information technology; and a mail survey of Wisconsin pharmacists about the Spanish language translation services available at their pharmacies.

Ken earned a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Princeton University in 2007 for his research on local people's participation in Nepal's Annapurna Conservation Area Project. He holds a M.S. in science and technology studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a B.A. in science, technology, and society from Penn State University.

Phone: (608) 262-6928

Email: kcroes@ssc.wisc.edu

Brendan Day

Programmer

As a UWSC programmer, Brendan is familiar with the CASES and Visual Basic programing languages. He is responsible for CATI instrument design and development, data cleaning, and preparing CASES data files, codebooks, and other documentation. He oversees coding of all open-ended data and occupation coding and has developed software that is used by the UWSC for coding, monitoring interviewer productivity, tracking response rates, and generating survey status reports.

Brendan is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison English Department with an emphasis in creative writing. He has sixteen years of survey research experience including telephone interviewing, training and supervising interviewers, database management, and customer satisfaction research in the corporate sector.

Phone: (608) 265-2285

Email: bday@ssc.wisc.edu

Kerryann DiLoreto

Project Director

Kerryann has been a project director at UWSC since 1999. Before joining the Survey Center, she worked as a Research Assistant on a number of projects, including the National Longitudinal Study of Aging, at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Kerryann has directed mail, web, CATI, and CAPI studies for the Survey Center and is also a trained focus group facilitator. In September 2008, she was re-certified as a trainer for the WMH-CIDI (World Mental Health Composite International Diagnostic Interview) training at the University of Michigan.

Currently, Kerryann directs the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), which now includes collecting Biomarkers from both Graduates and their Siblings. Kerryann has directed the Midwest Young Adult Study since it began in 2002. This study follows foster care youth as they age-out of the system in WI, IL, and IA. Wave 4 is currently underway through 2009.

Ms. DiLoreto is project director for the TEAM Study of Hypertensive African-Americans . This in-person study of 700 respondents is based in Milwaukee, Racine, Madison and Beloit. She directs all three phases (sample frame creation, coverage, and compliance) of the Synar Tobacco Study for the Department of Health and Family Services. Kerryann also coordinates UWSC's work on SHOW (Survey of the Health of Wisconsin).

Kerryann holds a master of science degree in sociology from UW Madison and received her bachelor's degree in Sociology and Philosophy with a minor in Religion, Culture, and Society from Loyola University Chicago.

Phone: (608) 265-6598

Email: kdiloret@ssc.wisc.edu

Jen Dykema

Associate Scientist and Survey Unit Coordinator

Dr. Jennifer Dykema is an Associate Scientist and Survey Unit Coordinator for the University of Wisconsin Survey Center and the Center for Demography and Ecology. Dr. Dykema assists Center researchers and staff on issues related to the collection of original data including question development, instrument design, and other survey-based design components. She has taught research methods at the UW and the Summer Institute of the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. Before receiving her doctorate in sociology from the University of Wisconsin (2004), she worked in the Interview Methodology Program the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Dykema has extensive experience and expertise in the field of survey research including: wording questions and designing survey instruments; developing protocols for, conducting, and analyzing the data from cognitive interviews, in-depth interviews, and focus groups; developing and implementing systems to code interviewer-respondent interaction; designing and implementing experiments to improve survey items; and conducting statistical analyses of response errors using multiple data sets. She has worked directly on developing or providing expert evaluation of several national and state-based surveys including the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement, National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), the Youth Behavior Survey (YBS), the Schools and Staffing Survey, the Parent Survey 3, and the California Survey of Birth Defects.

Click here for a listing of selected publications.

Email: dykema@ssc.wisc.edu

Kelly Elver

Project Management Director

Kelly is the Director of Project Management at the Survey Center where she oversees a staff of over 10 full-time Project Directors. She has over 20 years experience conducting survey research at the UW-Madison and has served as a project director at UWSC since 2000. During her tenure at UWSC Kelly has personally directed a wide variety of projects including the MIDUS: Midlife in the U.S. National Study of Health and Well-being Study, and the National Children's Study (NCS) Waukesha Vanguard Call Center. Kelly also collaborates with UWSC's Associate Director on developing and writing cost proposals and guiding business development at UWSC. Kelly is an expert on all components of survey research design with a focus on the design and administration of self-administered instruments, a topic she often lectures on at the UW.

Kelly holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to joining UWSC, she served as a Research Program Manager for the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology for 11 years, where her primary focus was self-administered questionnaire development.

Phone: (608) 262-7360

Email: kelver@ssc.wisc.edu

Lisa Klein

Project Director

Lisa joined the project director team in 2007 and manages a variety of telephone, mail, web, and focus group projects. She began working at UWSC as an interviewer in 2000 while she was an undergraduate at UW-Madison. She was quickly promoted to Shift Leader and then became a Survey Research Supervisor. She was instrumental in supervising and managing phone room staff during a period of tremendous growth at UWSC. She later worked as a graduate assistant for the WLS and MIDUS studies while she attended graduate school at UW-Madison.

Lisa directs the Wisconsin Financial Aid Study (WiscAid), which examines the impact of financial aid on the ability of students to pay for college and achieve their academic goals. She is the project director of the Children, Families and Schools project, co-directs the Family Health Survey, and manages a wide range of focus group projects focusing on improving student experiences at the University of Wisconsin. She also is the project director for UWSC Occupation and Industry Coding projects and Interaction Coding projects.

Lisa holds bachelor's degrees in political science and history. She also has a master's degree in literacy studies from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at UW-Madison. Her research investigates the effects of standardized testing and assessment on teachers and students.

Phone: (608) 265-5463

Email: lklein@ssc.wisc.edu

Chad Kniss

Project Director

Chad joined the UWSC in August 2006. He has six years experience in designing, implementing, and managing survey projects, including: designing sampling schemes, designing questionnaires, training interviewers, managing telephone interviewers, as well as data coding, cleaning, and analysis. Before joining the UWSC Chad worked in survey centers at Northern Illinois University and the University of Kansas.

Chad attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he received a bachelors degree in political science with minors in urban studies and history. He received a masters degree political science from the University of Kansas (with concentrations in American politics, public policy and federalism).

Phone: (608) 262-4157

Email: ckniss@ssc.wisc.edu

Vicki Lein

Project Director

Vicki Lein recently joined the UW Survey Center as a project director. As a Research Scientist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Vicki conducted research on business decision making, market-based incentives programs, and innovation. In addition to her experience with survey methods such as mail surveys, she has conducted focus groups and in-depth personal interviews.

Vicki's master's degree is in public policy and analysis, from the University of Wisconsin Lafollette Institute where she also earned a certificate in energy analysis and policy. Her bachelor's degree in economics is from Carleton College.

Phone: (608) 263-3427

Email: vlein@ssc.wisc.edu

Augie Salick

Programmer

Augie originally joined the UWSC as an interviewer in 2003. He is currently a member of the programming team, with which he writes electronic survey instruments, cleans and delivers data to clients, and helps maintain the UWSC's computer network.

He graduated in 2005 from the University of Wisconsin - Madison with a bachelor's degree in engineering mechanics and astronautics.

Phone: (608) 265-4064

Email: asalick@ssc.wisc.edu

Wes Taylor

Programmer

Wes is a member of the programming and analytical team, responsible for survey programming, computer and network maintenance, and data analysis.

Wes holds a master's degree from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, and a bachelor's degree in environmental studies from the College of William and Mary. Most of his survey experience focuses on environmental and natural resource research. Wes previously worked at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for eight years as a program manager, database administrator and analyst, and more recently in the private sector for two years as a project manager and producer for commercial software.

Phone: (608) 263-3349

Email: wtaylor@ssc.wisc.edu

Theresa Thompson-Colón

Project Director

Dr. Theresa Thompson-Colón is a full-time project director at the UWSC, and is responsible for the implementation, management, and completion of a number of large data collection and research projects including the Puerto Rican Elderly Health Condition Project (a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Department of Public Health at the University of Puerto Rico); the Wisconsin Family and Health Survey; and the 1910 and 1920 Puerto Rico Census Project.

Dr. Thompson-Colón is well experienced in directing all phases of project implementation and overseeing every aspect regarding research design; development, testing and implementation of questionnaires (both in English and Spanish); data collection; data entry, cleaning and coding; data management; and the preparation of data sets with full project and data documentation. Dr. Thompson-Colón has also produced articles, reports, and presentations, taking part in the analysis and dissemination of these study findings.

Dr. Thompson-Colón received her doctoral degree from the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005. In her dissertation work, she examined the multiple and complex associations between social networks, migration, and the health status and well-being of Mexican immigrant mothers and their children with data collected both in Mexico and the US. She holds a bachelor's degree in business administration, majoring in marketing, from the University of Puerto Rico, and a Master's degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Email: tthompso@ssc.wisc.edu

Drew Vogel

Programmer

Drew began his career with the Survey Center as a telephone interviewer and Shift Leader while earning his B.S. in computer information systems from Herzing College. Now he helps maintain the computer network and programs Web applications that support various business and operational functions of the Survey Center. He is also UWSC's resident linux expert.

Phone: (608) 261-1922

Email: dvogel@ssc.wisc.edu

Eric White

Director of Technical Operations

Eric is the Director of Technical Operations at the Survey Center. He supervises a team of five technical staff and is the UWSC network administrator. He holds a B.A. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and completed the sociology department's Concentration in Analysis and Research program.

He is an experienced CASES programmer, having worked with the CASES software suite since 1992. He and the other technical staff support and maintain a heterogeneous network environment and tend to a flock of more than 100 workstations.

Phone: (608) 265-4066

Email: ewhite@ssc.wisc.edu