Barbara Schneider, John A. Hannah Chair and University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education and Department of Sociology at Michigan State University, is a past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Her term as president started at the 2013 Annual Meeting and concluded at the end of the 2014 Annual Meeting. 

Schneider will succeed William G. Tierney, a University of Southern California professor and director of the Pullias Center (formerly the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis). Dr. Tierney will assume the AERA presidency on April 17, 2012 at the close of the Association’s 93rd  Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. 

“Barbara Schneider has significantly advanced the scientific study of education and has made major contributions to AERA throughout her career,” says AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. “As author and coeditor of two volumes published by AERA, Estimating Causal Effects Using Experimental and Observational Designs and the Handbook of Education Policy Research, Schneider has helped to shape the future of education research and policy.”  

Schneider, who holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, has been at the forefront of education research. Her work focuses on family, social context of schooling, and sociology of knowledge. Her teaching and research examine social contexts of schools and families and the influence they exert on academic and social well-being of adolescents as they move into adulthood. Schneider places a particular emphasis on improving educational opportunities for students with limited economic and social resources. 

She is coauthor of 15 books, including The Ambitious Generation: America’s Teenagers Motivated but Directionless; Becoming Adult: How Teenagers Prepare for the World of Work; and Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for Improvement. Schneider also is author of numerous journal articles and has served as editor of Sociology of Education. 

Among her honors, Schneider has been named an AERA Fellow; a Fulbright New Centuries Scholar (2007–2008 cohort); and Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago. In 2011, she was awarded the Elizabeth G. Cohen Distinguished Career in Applied Sociology of Education Award by the American Sociological Association.

Schneider has served as editor of AERA’s Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (2001-2003), chair of the AERA Government Relations Committee, a member of the Governing Board of the AERA Grants Program, and a member of the AERA Task Force on the Reauthorization of the Institute of Education Sciences.