The Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the American Enterprise Institute offer a unique program aimed at cultivating human capital within the education-policy sector. The Emerging Education Policy Scholars (EEPS) program brings newly minted Ph.D. scholars and Ph.D. candidates who bring to the table a keen research eye, fresh ideas, and boundless (or budding) enthusiasm for education policy to our nation’s capital to meet with education-policy experts and to share and brainstorm exciting new directions for K–12 education research. The program focuses on three over-arching goals:

  • To foster an opportunity for talented, promising scholars to connect with other scholars in their field, as well as to introduce them to key players in the education-policy arena;
  • To expand the pool of talent and ideas from which the education-policy arena currently draws; and
  • To increase understanding of how the worlds of policy and practice intersect with scholarly research in education and related fields.

For more information about the EEPS program, please contact program coordinator Victoria McDougald. The EEPS program is generously supported by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Class of 2010-11

Daphna Bassok   Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia

Hella Bel Hadj Amor   Practice Expert: Education Policy and Research, Education Northwest

Branin Bowe   Senior Research Associate, Kingsbury Center, Northwest Evaluation Association

Zoë Burkholder   Associate Professor, Education Foundations, Montclair State University

Matt Chingos   Senior Fellow and Research Director, Brown Center on Education Policy, Governance Studies, Brookings Institution

Erin Cocke   Doctoral Candidate, Sociology of Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University Research Assistant, Institute for Education and Social Policy

Diana D’Amico   Assistant Professor of Education, George Mason University

T. Elon Dancy II   Associate Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy, University of Oklahoma

Rachel Dinkes   Senior Researcher, American Institutes for Research

Will Dobbie   Assistant Professor, Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University

Enis Dogan   Associate Director, Assessment Research, Achieve

Todd Grindal   Education Associate, Abt Associates

Jason Grissom   Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education, Peabody College of Education and Human Development, Vanderbilt University

Michael Hansen   Principal Researcher, Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research Program, American Institutes for Research

Michael Hartney   Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, Lake Forest College

Julia Kaufman   Associate Policy Researcher, RAND Corporation

Cory Koedel   Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy, University of Missouri

Victoria Rankin Marks   Research Analyst, American Institutes for Research

Ashlyn Aiko Nelson   Associate Professor, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University

Jonna Perrillo   Associate Professor of English Education, University of Texas at El Paso

Karen Rambo-Hernandez   Assistant Professor, Educational Leadership Studies, West Virginia Unviersity

Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj   Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Leadership, Management, and Policy, Seton Hall University

Muna Shami   Senior Researcher, American Institute for Research

Arnold Shober   Associate Professor of Government, Lawrence University

Katharine Strunk   Associate Professor of Education and Policy, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California

David Stuit   Partner, Basis Policy Research

Eric Tucker   Co-Founder and Executive Director, Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School

Jennifer Wallner   Assistant Professor, School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa