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 2020–2021

Andrew Bacher-Hicks

Assistant Professor in the Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development

Joshua Bleiberg

Post-Doctoral Research Associate in School Reform at the Annenberg Institution

Carycruz M. Bueno

Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute and The Policy Lab at Brown University

Christopher Cleveland

Ph.D. Candidate in Education Policy and Program Evaluation at Harvard University

Jonathan E. Collins

Assistant Professor of Education and Political Science (by courtesy) at Brown University

Elise Dizon-Ross

Post-Doctoral Scholar at the California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley

Walter G. Ecton

Ph.D. Candidate in Educational Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College

Jessica Goldstein

Distinguished Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas

Chuanyi Guo

Postdoctoral Scholar in the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Kentucky

Erica Harbatkin

Postdoctoral research associate at the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) at Michigan State University

Sarah Kabourek

Research Scientist at NORC at the University of Chicago

Kate Kennedy

Ph.D. candidate in Urban Education Policy at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education

Jenna W. Kramer

Associate policy researcher at the RAND Corporation

Matthew Lenard

Ph.D. candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Melissa Arnold Lyon

Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University

Christopher R. Marsicano

Assistant Professor in the Educational Studies Department and Founding Director of the College Crisis Initiative (C2i) at Davidson College

James Paul

Distinguished Doctoral Fellow at the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform

Christine M. T. Pitts

Manager of Research and Evaluation at Portland Public Schools

Angela R. Watson

Senior Research Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy

Haisheng Yang 

Senior Analyst at Abt Associates