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 Meredith Coffey.

EEPS Class of 2024–2025

Kate Barnes: Ph.D. candidate and Doctoral Academy Fellow in Education Policy at the University of Arkansas.

Caroline Bartlett: Ph.D. candidate in Education Policy and K-12 Educational Administration at Michigan State University and National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow.

Alexander Cassell: Government relations specialist at the American Council on Education (ACE) with a Ph.D. in higher education from The Pennsylvania State University

Sofia Dueñas: Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. 

Daniella Ganelin: Ph.D. candidate in Education Data Science at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.  

Kendall Hageman-Mays: Ph.D. candidate in NC State University’s College of Education’s Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development Program. 

Ogechi Irondi: Ph.D. candidate in Education Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. 

Alvin Makori: Ph.D. candidate in Urban Education Policy at the University of Southern California.

Dillon McGill: Ph.D. candidate in Education Policy at Vanderbilt University and research affiliate of the Research Alliance for New York City Schools and the Tennessee Education Research Alliance. 

Alex Moran: Ph.D. candidate at Florida State University.

Anna Moyer: Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama. Quantitative and mixed methods researcher with a Ph.D. in Education Policy and Leadership from Vanderbilt University.

Sarah Novicoff: Ph.D. Candidate in Educational Policy and Economics of Education at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. 

Diana Quintero: Ph.D. candidate in Education Policy at Vanderbilt University. 

Ayman Shakeel: Economics Senior Analyst at Abt Global with a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Prasiddha (Sid) Shakya: Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Colorado State University.

Daniel Sparks: Postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education with a Ph.D. in Economics & Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. 

Tom Swiderski: Research Associate at the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina (EPIC) at UNC Chapel Hill with a Ph.D. in Public Policy from UNC Chapel Hill.

Emily Wilcox Walls: Ph.D. candidate at the Martin School of Public Policy at the University of Kentucky. 

Minseok Yang: Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis at the University of Missouri with a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.