Joseph Lee Rodgers

Joseph Lee Rodgers is Lois Autrey Betts Chair of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.  He moved to Vanderbilt in 2012 from the University of Oklahoma, whee he worked from 1981 until 2012, and where he holds the title George Lynn Cross Emeritus Professor of Psychology.  Joe earned his Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology from the L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1981 (and also minored in Biostatistics at UNC).  He has held short-term teaching/research positions at Ohio State, University of Hawaii, UNC, Duke, University of Southern Denmark, and Penn.  He has published six books and over 175 papers and chapters on statistics/quantitative methods, demography, behavior genetics, and developmental and social psychology.  His best-known paper, “Thirteen Ways to Look at the Correlation Coefficient,” was published in American Statistician in 1988.  Joe is married to Jacci Rodgers, an academic accountant (and currently an associate dean of Peabody College at Vanderbilt), and they have two adult daughters; Rachel works for an international development company in DC, and Naomi is a Ph.D. student in Geology at USC in Los Angeles.  Joe’s hobbies include playing tennis and golf, reading, and music.