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 2019–2020

Megan Austin

Researcher at the American Institutes for Research (AIR)

Helen Baxendale

Doctoral Candidate in public policy at the University of Oxford

Molly I. Beck 

Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas

Kristin Blagg 

Research Associate at the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute

Mark Chin 

Doctoral Candidate in education policy and program evaluation at Harvard University

Corey A. DeAngelis 

Director of School Choice at the Reason Foundation, Adjunct Scholar at Cato Institute, and Vice President of the Board at Educational Freedom Institute

Alex Eble 

Assistant Professor of economics and education at the Teachers College, Columbia University

Allison Gilmour 

Assistant Professor of special education at Temple University

Derek Gottlieb

Assistant Professor of educational foundations and curriculum studies at the University of Northern Colorado

Patrick Graff

Doctoral Candidate in the sociology of education at the University of Notre Dame 

Adam Kho 

Assistant Professor of K-12 education policy and leadership at the Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California

Jing Liu

Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Annenberg Institute at Brown University

Katharine Meyer

Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and Research Affiliate with the Nudge4Solutions Lab at the University of Virginia

Tomas Monarrez

Labor Economist and Research Associate in the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute

Kadeem Noray

Doctoral Candidate in public policy (economics track) at Harvard University and Becker Scholar in price theory at the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago

Amanda Rutherford

Assistant Professor and Director of the Undergraduate Honors Program at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-Bloomington

Sabrina Solanki

IES Postdoctoral Fellow with the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan

Mona Vakilifathi 

Assistant Professor of Public Service in the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University

Cadence Willse

Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford University

Chris Yaluma

Doctoral Candidate in education policy at Ohio State University