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 Brian Jacob, Kevin Stange, and Christina Weiland, 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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During my time at U-M, CIERS was an ideal place to present work ranging from a research proposal to a finished piece. I have not seen another seminar like it.

— Daniel Kreisman, assistant professor of economics at Georgia State University

Student working on laptop in class at the University of Michigan

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Research projects

Most of our projects involve working with education partners in evaluations that use administrative datasets. Methods employed include randomized trials, regression discontinuity, and instrumental variables.

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Featured faculty

Brian A. Jacob

Faculty director of the postdoctoral fellowship program

Jacob previously taught middle school in Harlem and served as a policy analyst in the NYC mayor’s office. Jacob’s interests lie in labor economics, program evaluation, and the economics of education. His current research focuses on urban school reform, with a particular emphasis on standards and accountability initiatives. He is consistently ranked among the top U.S. education policy influencers and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is the co-founder of EPI and the Walter H. Annenberg professor of education policy, professor of public policy, economics, and education.

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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.