Postdoctoral fellowship program

A two-year fellowship focused on the generation and dissemination of high-quality education policy research

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The postdoctoral fellowship program trains recent PhD graduates how to estimate the causal effects of education policies and practices on student outcomes, using longitudinal data collected by state and local education agencies to do so. Importantly, fellow training takes place with an extraordinary interdisciplinary community of students, faculty, and staff who share a passion for improving outcomes across U.S. education.

Fellows engage in ongoing education-related research projects and participate in all aspects of the research process; collecting, compiling and analyzing data; designing surveys; participating in research planning; writing papers; presenting results at seminars and professional meetings; and supervising research assistants. Integral to our training program, fellows learn how to develop a research partnership with practitioners or public agencies and to communicate results to non-technical audiences.

Fellows receive close mentorship from professors Christina Weiland, Brian Jacob, and Kevin Stange, and also have the opportunity to work with U-M's dynamic cross-disciplinary community of researchers and faculty. Fellows will have ample opportunity to participate in seminars, training, gain exposure and the opportunity to network with eminent education scholars.

Fellows receive a competitive salary and benefits, plus research funds. Former EPI postdoctoral fellows have gone on to pursue successful careers in academia and other research organizations, some of whom have served in leadership positions within local and state education agencies.

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I believe the postdoc offers three things that set graduates up for success: supportive mentors, opportunity to build a strong research portfolio, and access to great data through the MEDC. Postdoc at EPI was a very fulfilling professional experience for me. I gained clarity about the work I wanted to do and the emphasis on policy relevant research inspired me to build a career in policy research.

— Tareena Musaddiq, Researcher at Mathematica

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Research project

The fellow will work on an early learning project involving work with education partners and using administrative datasets. They will clean and analyze data; participate in research planning; write papers; present results at seminars and professional meetings; and help to supervise research assistants.

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Featured faculty

Brian Jacob

Co-founder of the Education Policy Initiative, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy

Dr. Jacob is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy and professor of economics at the Ford School, and is co-director of the Youth Policy Lab. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Brian came to Michigan from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government; he previously served as a policy analyst in the NYC Mayor's Office and taught middle school in East Harlem. His primary fields of interest are labor economics, program evaluation, and the economics of education. Brian's current research focuses on urban school reform, with a particular emphasis on standards and accountability initiatives. At the Ford School, he teaches "Economics of Education" and classes focused on education policy.

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Jason Baron was an IES postdoctoral fellow with the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He recently obtained his PhD in economics from Florida State University and will join the Department of Economics at Duke University as an assistant professor in 2021-22. Prior to his assistant professorship, Jason will be a Scholar in Residence of Economics at Duke University. His research focuses on topics in the economics of education and public finance.

Tareena Musaddiq is a Researcher at Mathematica in the Human Services division. Her research interests include the economics of education, health economics and development economics. Her work focuses on evaluating policies related to education and health outcomes of children in early childhood education and K-12 schools.

Marissa Thompson is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of racial and socioeconomic inequality, with an emphasis on understanding the role of education in producing disparate outcomes over the life-course. Marissa’s current research explores the Black gender gap in educational attainment, parental choice of segregated schools, and the causal effects of a first-dollar scholarship policy on college access in Michigan. She employs both descriptive and quasi-experimental quantitative methods using large national datasets and novel survey experiments.