Rate My Professor Lisa Dierker

Lisa C. Dierker serves as the Walter Crowell University Professor of Social Sciences, Professor of Psychology, and Professor of Education Studies at Wesleyan University. She received her BA from The Ohio State University, MA from the University of Connecticut, and PhD from the University of Connecticut. A research psychologist with training in chronic disease epidemiology, Dierker focuses on the application of innovative statistical methods to longitudinal data, particularly in studying developmental trajectories of substance use, psychopathology, and associated risk and protective factors.

Throughout her career at Wesleyan University, Dierker has held positions including Chair of the Psychology Department and Director of Pilot Programs for the Center for Pedagogical Innovation. She is affiliated with the Quantitative Analysis Center and serves as core faculty in the College of Education Studies. Dierker co-created Passion-Driven Statistics, a curriculum that engages undergraduate students in data-driven research using their own questions of interest. The program has received National Science Foundation grants including award numbers 0942246, 1323084, and 1820766 for a total exceeding $4 million, a Fulbright Specialist appointment beginning in 2021 to teach the approach internationally, a $1 million National Institutes of Health grant in 2008 to develop statistical models for addiction research, and a $50,000 grant from the Peter F. McManus Charitable Trust in 2009.

Her publications include 'A Practical Guide to Calculating Cohen’s f2, a Measure of Local Effect Size, from PROC MIXED' (2012), 'Characteristics and functions of non-suicidal self-injury in a community sample of adolescents' (2007), 'Trends in US depression prevalence from 2015 to 2020: the widening treatment gap' (2022), 'Use and abuse of alcohol and illicit drugs in US adolescents: Results of the National Comorbidity Survey–Adolescent Supplement' (2012), and 'A time-varying effect model for intensive longitudinal data' (2012). Dierker contributes to pedagogy through open resources, Coursera courses, and workshops on statistics education.