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 2021–2022

Christine Anderson 

Administrator for West Aurora School District’s multilingual learner program.

Andrew Camp 

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

Danielle Edwards 

Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. 

Brian Fitzpatrick 

Sociologist of Education and Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Center for Research in Educational Policy.

Dillon Fuchsman

Postdoctoral Fellow at the Sinquefield Center for Applied Economic Research at Saint Louis University.

David M. Houston 

Assistant Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University, a faculty affiliate at EdPolicyForward at George Mason University, and the Survey Director of the Education Next Poll at Harvard University. 

Michael Little, Ph.D.,

Assistant Professor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis in the College of Education at North Carolina State University. 

Sabrina Little 

Instructor at Morehead State University for Foundations of Education, Education in its Philosophical Context, and Philosophy. 

Kathleen Lynch 

Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences at the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut.  

Valentina Martinez-Pabon 

Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at Tulane University. 

Becca Merrill, Ph.D. 

Researcher at Education Northwest. 

Emily Morton 

Research scientist at the Center for School and Student Progress at NWEA.

Kirsten Slungaard Mumma 

Postdoctoral fellow at the Wheelock Educational Policy Center (WEPC) at Boston University. 

Mary Pei 

Ph.D. student, Johns Hopkins University School of Education.

Lam D. Pham 

Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at North Carolina State University.

Carly Robinson 

Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University.

Matthew Patrick Shaw 

Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education and an Assistant Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University.

Lena Shi 

Doctoral candidate in the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

Sara Townsend 

Doctoral candidate in education policy at George Mason University. 

Xiaoyang Ye 

Postdoctoral Researcher in Education Policy at the Annenberg Institute of Brown University.