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. 

Class of 2018-19

Cameron Anglum  Doctoral Candidate in education policy at University of Pennsylvania

Sade Bonilla  Doctoral Candidate at Stanford University

Paul Bruno  Doctoral Candidate in urban education policy at the University of Southern California

Olivia Chi  Doctoral Candidate in education policy and program evaluation at Harvard University and Doctoral Fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School

Joshua Childs  Assistant Professor of education policy and planning in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas, Austin

Megan Duff  Doctoral Candidate in education policy at Teachers College, Columbia University

Hayden Fredrick-Clarke  Director of Cultural Proficiency of Boston Public Schools and Founder of BlackPrint Education Consulting

Michel Grosz  Senior Analyst at Abt Associates

Joanne Golann  Assistant Professor of public policy and education and Assistant Professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University

Andrew Kidd  Economist with the Economic Research Center at The Buckeye Institute

Jacob Kirksey  Doctoral Candidate in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education and a Graduate Research Fellow with the National Science Foundation

Shira Korn  Doctoral Candidate in K-12 education policy at and a Master of public policy student at University of Southern California

Dennis Kramer  Assistant Professor of education and policy and Director of the Education Policy Research Center at the University of Florida

Tuan Nguyen  Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Kansas State University

Laura Northrop  Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Cleveland State University

Luis Rodriguez  Assistant Professor of educational leadership in the Department of Administration, Leadership, and Technology at New York University

M. Danish Shakeel  Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Program on Education Policy and Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Elise Swanson  Distinguished Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, Research Assistant in the Office for Education Policy, and a Research Fellow with Charassein: The Character Assessment Initiative at the University of Arkansas

Samantha Viano  Faculty Member in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University