High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Robert E. Stake (born December 18, 1927) is a Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Stake is a native of Adams, Nebraska. After earning a PhD in Psychometrics at Princeton University in 1958, he assumed the position of Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, which he held until moving to the University of Illinois in 1963. He became Associate Director of the Illinois State Testing Program. The testing program was absorbed by the Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation (CIRCE) in 1969. There he served as Co-Director and subsequently in 1975 as Director of the CIRCE until his retirement in 1998. He has been a leader in development of program evaluation methods for decades. Among his many contributions are the 2010 book Qualitative Research: Studying How Things Work, and in 1995, The Art of Case Study Research. .