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Student Financial Aid Research Network | Printer Friendly | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Governor Hotel, Portland, OR June 21-23, 2007 Rob Anderson is Director of Research and Planning for the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. Effective July 1, 2007, he will serve as Senior Director of Policy, Planning, and Research for the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission. Rob's research addresses issues pertaining to student access and financial aid policy with a particular interest in merit aid programs and their impact on institutional and student outcomes. A doctoral candidate in the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia, Rob has previously served as a college instructor and administrator before undertaking his current duties as a state policy researcher and analyst. Sandy Baum is a Senior Policy Analyst at the College Board and Professor of Economics at Skidmore College. She has written extensively on issues relating to college access, college pricing, student aid policy, student debt, affordability and other aspects of higher education finance. Dr. Baum is the co-author of Trends in Student Aid and Trends in College Pricing for the College Board, in addition to the 2004 publication, Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society. Other recent work includes a study of manageable student debt levels and a proposal for a new approach to need analysis for independent students. She is co-chair of the Rethinking Student Aid study group, a foundation-funded effort under the auspices of the College Board to develop long-term proposals for reforming the student aid system. Angela Bell is a doctoral candidate in the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on issues related to higher education policy, college access, and educational equity, particularly for racial/ethnic minorities and individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Her dissertation is titled College opportunity in context: An analysis of cultural, organizational, and policy influences on the college enrollment behaviors of students from low-income backgrounds. She is a 2006-2007 ASHE/Lumina Dissertation Fellow and the Zell and Shirley Miller Graduate Fellow in the Institute of Higher Education. She worked for three years as the graduate research assistant on the Lumina-funded College Access Policies Project headed by Dr. Scott Thomas and Dr. Laura Perna. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, Ms. Bell taught high school Latin for nine years. Ms. Bell received her B.A. in Classics and Women's Studies from Princeton University and a M.Ed. in Language Education from the University of Georgia. Joseph Berger is a policy and research officer at the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation's research and program development arm, he worked in its communications section, overseeing the publication and promotion of the Millennium Research Series. Joseph is interested in understanding how policies designed to improve equitable access to higher education can be nurtured through research and evaluation. A resident of Montreal, Joseph has a Bachelor's degree in journalism from Concordia University, where he is currently pursuing studies toward a Master's degree in public policy and public administration. He is the co-author of the 2006-07 of the Foundation's flagship publication, The Price of Knowledge. Lutz Berkner is a Senior Research Associate at MPR Associates, a consulting firm in Berkeley, California, that specializes in education policy and research. For the last ten years he has worked on creating the public use data files for several of the higher education surveys conducted by the U. S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), including the National Postsecondary Student Aid Studies (NPSAS:93, 96, 2000, 2004, and 2008) and the Beginning Postsecondary Students longitudinal studies (BPS:94, 98, 2001, 2006 and 2009), which focus on student persistence and graduation rates. He is the author of many NCES analytical reports, including Access to Postsecondary Education for the 1992 High School Graduates, Trends in Undergraduate Borrowing 1989-1996, Student Financing of Undergraduate Education 2003-04, and Descriptive Summary of 1995-96 Beginning Postsecondary Students: Six Years Later. Recently he helped develop the college level data on the EconomicDiversity.org website. During the 1980's he was in charge of financial aid research in the New Jersey Department of Higher Education. Michelle Asha Cooper is the deputy director for the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance. Michelle's research focuses on issues related to college access, persistence, alignment of P-16 educational standards, and financial aid, particularly for low- and moderate-income students and racial/ethnic minorities. Prior to joining the Advisory Committee, she worked for the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), Council for Independent Colleges (CIC), and King's College. She is the 2003 recipient of the National Education Association's Excellence in the Academy New Scholar Award. Michelle received her bachelor's degree from the College of Charleston, a master's degree from Cornell University, and a doctorate from the University of Maryland, College Park. Lisa DeFrank-Cole coordinates the Office of Fellowships and Graduate School Advising at West Virginia University. Her main priorities include preparing students to apply for graduate school and advising them in competing for prestigious scholarships, such as the Rhodes, Truman, and Goldwater. Prior to working at WVU, she served as the Executive Director of the PROMISE Scholarship program, aided Governor Wise as Assistant for Policy and Research in Charleston, advised scholars at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and also worked at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Pittsburgh. Brent Evans joined the Advisory Committee in August 2006 as an assistant director after receiving his Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Previously, he worked in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at the University of Virginia and taught secondary education at Haileybury College in Hertfordshire, England. He holds a B.A. in Physics and American Government from the University of Virginia. Fred Galloway is a faculty member in the School of Leadership and Education Sciences at the University of San Diego, where he has also served as Associate Dean and Director for Strategic Programs. He previously directed federal policy analysis at the American Council on Education in Washington DC and managed a national postsecondary evaluation at Macro International before joining the faculty and administration in 1991. His areas of expertise are the economics of education, higher education policy, and econometrics. Although Professor Galloway has produced a significant volume of education-related research, he is particularly proud of two commissioned pieces - one for a special conference convened by the Secretary of Education titled "Rethinking the Allocation of Pell Grants" and the other for the National Center for Education Statistics titled "Special Issued in Postsecondary Education and Lifelong Learning: Implication for National Surveys." Sara Goldrick-Rab is an assistant professor of Educational Policy Studies and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and WISCAPE Scholar at the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education. Current research projects include a study of the college transitions of Chicago Public School students and an analysis of socioeconomic changes over time at UW-Madison. She is a co-author of Putting Poor People to Work: How the Work-First Idea Eroded College Access for the Poor (Russell Sage 2006), and she has published in journals such as Sociology of Education and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and received research grants from the Association for Institutional Research, American Educational Research Association, Mellon Foundation, and Spencer Foundation. Dr. Goldrick-Rab was named a 2004 Rising Scholar by the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good and was awarded a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2006-2007. Nancy Goldschmidt is the Associate Vice Provost for the Oregon Health & Science University, and has concurrently served as lead staff to the Oregon State Board of Higher Education's Access and Affordability Working Group since 2004. Prior to joining OHSU, Goldschmidt worked in several performance planning, assessment, research, and evaluation roles for the Oregon University System for more than 15 years. She also served in several academic and research capacities prior to joining OUS, including Assistant Professor of Educational Policy and Leadership at the University of Southern California, and Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Director of ERIC, and in several capacities in K-12 education, including assistant superintendent, research associate, and teacher. Dr. Goldschmidt earned her Ph.D. in Educational Policy and her M.S. in Special Education and K-12 Administration from The Ohio State University; and her B.S. in Art Education and Art History from Youngstown State University. Tricia Grimes is a policy and research analyst at the Minnesota Office of Higher Education in St. Paul. Tricia's duties include legislative and federal relations at the Office of Higher Education. She has worked in student financing research for over 20 years. Prior to working at the Office of Higher Education she worked for a year as the administrator of the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy and for eight years as a legislative fiscal analyst for the Minnesota House of Representatives. She has a master's degree in public affairs from the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute and a bachelor's degree in economics from Grinnell College. W. Lee Hansen, Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been involved in student financial aid policy and research since the mid-1960s. His particular fields of interest include labor economics, the economics of higher education, and economic education. Over the years he has served on various ACT, College Board, U.S. Department of Education, and Carnegie Commission study groups concerned with financial aid policy and research. With then-colleague, Burton Weisbrod, he developed the Wisconsin Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) proposal in 1969 that called for full or near full-cost tuition along with need-based grants based on financial need. Laura Horn is the director of the Postsecondary Education and Transition to College program at MPR Associates, a firm specializing in education research and policy analysis. For the past 15 years, she has conducted research and written extensively on issues related to access and achievement in postsecondary education. Her current research focuses on the experiences of community college students, both nationwide and in California. Christopher Anthony Kypuros is a doctoral candidate in the Higher Education Leadership Program at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV). His research focuses on issues related to student loan default. His dissertation is titled Factors Affecting Student Loan Default for Nevada Public Higher Education. Presently, Mr. Kypuros is the Associate Director of Student Financial Services at UNLV. Prior to joining UNLV, he served in the Financial Aid Offices at St. Mary's University and the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. Christopher is a member of the UNLV American Indian Alliance and serves as the Faculty Advisor for UNLV's Native American Student Association. Mr. Kypuros received his B.A. in English from UNLV and a M.A. in English Language and Literature from St. Mary's University. John B. Lee is president of JBL Associates, Inc., in Bethesda, MD, a consulting firm specializing in postsecondary education policy research. Dr. Lee has published dozens of reports on different aspects of postsecondary education policy and finance, including state aid and employer aid to postsecondary students, student debt, affordability of college and trends in faculty salary for clients including the National Center for Education Statistics and the Office of Student Financial Aid in the U.S. Department of Education, the National Education Association, EdFund and the Lumina Foundation. Currently Dr. Lee is involved in a major effort to help community colleges improve student graduation rates. Before founding JBL Associates, he worked for the Education and Labor Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Education Commission of the States, and Stanford Research International. He earned a B.A. and M.A. from California State University at Sacramento, and received an Ed.D. in postsecondary education from the University of California, Berkeley. Leesha Lin is acting Director of Operational Policy and Research at the Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP), Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC). The Canada Student Loans Program is responsible for the need-based student aid programs of the Canadian federal government. Leesha has been with the CSLP for more than six years and has been managing the research projects in the areas of student aid related to postsecondary education. She has a M.A. in Economics specialized in quantitative studies from University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. She is also a Certified Management Accountant. Kathleen Little has worked at the College Board since June 1986, and is currently the Senior Adviser, Student Aid Policy. In this position, she provides staff support to the College Board's Rethinking Student Aid project, the Task Force on College Access for Students from Low-Income Backgrounds, and the Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid publications. She previously served as Senior Executive Director, Financial Aid Programs and Services and Executive Director, Financial Aid Services. Until October 2006, she was responsible for the design and development of the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE Service, the Institutional Documentation Service, and the Financial Aid Strategy Tool. She also had overall management responsibility for the College Board's National Recognition and Scholarship Programs, as well as the College Board Educational Loan Programs and financial aid software tools. She also provided chief staff support to the College Scholarship Service's Financial Aid Standards and Services Advisory Committee, and had primary staff responsibility for the Institutional Methodology of need analysis. Ms. Little holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in French from the College of William and Mary and a Master of Arts degree in Higher Education Administration from Teachers College, Columbia University. David A. Longanecker is the executive director of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) in Boulder, Colorado. Previously, Longanecker served for six years as the assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to that, he was the state higher education executive officer (SHEEO) in Colorado and Minnesota. He was also the principal analyst for higher education for the Congressional Budget Office. Longanecker has served on numerous boards and commissions. He has written extensively on a range of higher education issues. His primary interests in higher education are: access, promoting student and institutional performance, teacher education, finance, the efficient use of educational technologies, and academic collaboration in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. He holds an Ed.D. from Stanford University, an M.A. in student personnel work from the George Washington University, and a B.A. in sociology from Washington State University. Christopher Mazzeo is a New York City-based consultant providing a range of research, project management, technical assistance and strategic planning services for philanthropic foundations and non-profit organizations working in the areas of school improvement, high school reform and higher education access and success. Among his clients include MDRC, the James Irvine Foundation, the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, and the Joyce Foundation. Previously Chris was a senior policy analyst in the Education Division of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, where he served as Project Director for Pathways to Advancement: Expanding Postsecondary Educational Opportunities for Low-Income Adults. Chris also served as co-director of the NGA Center's elementary and secondary school improvement work. From 1999-2002, Chris served as an Assistant Professor in Education and Public Management at the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College of the City University of New York (CUNY). He earned his Ph.D. in Social Sciences, Policy and Educational Practice from Stanford University in 2001. Courtney McSwain joined the Institute for Higher Education Policy as a research analyst in 2006. Prior to her appointment as a research analyst, Ms. McSwain worked at the Institute as a research associate and co-authored the report Private Scholarships Count: Access to Higher Education and the Critical Role of the Private Sector. Most recently, Ms. McSwain served as the principal author of The Future of Private Loans: Who is Borrowing, and Why? Ms. McSwain is currently managing several research projects for the Institute, including a study on access to higher education for working poor students. Ms. McSwain received her bachelor's degree in sociology from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, N.C. and her master's degree in public policy from the American University in Washington, D.C. Anne Motte is a Policy and Research Officer at the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. One of the co-authors of the Price of Knowledge 2006-07, she is also overseeing the evaluation of the Millennium access bursaries introduced in 2005. A graduate of economics from McGill university and Université du Québec à Montréal, she has done quantitative analysis on labour market issues as well adult education. Before joining the Foundation, she worked at the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) on the implementation of two large scale demonstration projects to evaluate the impact of programs designed to address barriers to access to post-secondary education: Future to Discover (in New Brunswick and Manitoba) and AVID (British Columbia). David S. Mundel graduated from MIT with degrees in Physics and Political Science and received his Ph.D. from MIT, in Political Science and Economics. During his graduate studies, Dr. Mundel was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, a teaching assistant at MIT, and an instructor at the Naval War College. Subsequently, he was an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government. In addition Dr. Mundel was a consultant to the Executive Office of the President in the Johnson and Nixon administrations, where he was a principal contributor to a 1969 report to the President, "Toward a Long-Range Plan for Federal Financial Support for Higher Education," and a participant in the public policy process that resulted in the passage and implementation of the Pell Grant Program. For the last several years, David has been an independent consultant, serving both not-for-profit research organizations and for-profit companies. Erik C. Ness is an assistant professor in the Department of Administrative and Policy Studies at University of Pittsburgh. His research interests include the politics of higher education, the public policy process, and the finance and governance of higher education systems. He previously served as a staff member of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and recently earned a Ph.D. in education policy from Vanderbilt University. His dissertation was funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education and was a finalist for the Politics of Education Outstanding Dissertation Award. His book, Merit Aid and the Politics of Education, will be released this fall. Ya-Bilongo Nungisa is with the Canada Student Loans Program. He obtained his Ph.D. in demography from University of Montreal in the province of Quebec. He has been employed with the Canadian federal governments for several years. Colleen O'Brien is the Director of the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, a position she has held since August 2003. The Pell Institute conducts and disseminates research and policy analysis to encourage policymakers, educators, and the public to improve educational opportunities and outcomes of low-income, first-generation, and disabled college students, and is sponsored by the Council for Opportunity in Education. In her work with the Pell Institute, Ms. O'Brien is the principal author and analyst of research regarding access and success in postsecondary education for disadvantaged students, as well as innovative practices and policies that further educational opportunities. Previously, Ms. O'Brien served as Vice President of the Institute for Higher Education Policy. At the Institute, her work focused on issues that affect low-income and minority student access, particularly pre-college preparation and student aid, minority-serving institutions, and the changing demographics in postsecondary education. Derek V. Price, Ph.D. is the principal owner of DVP PRAXIS LTD, a national leader in helping colleges identify and implement data-driven strategies to improve student access, retention and graduation rates. Dr. Price's areas of expertise include workshop development, meeting facilitation, strategic planning, and program review and evaluation. He also conducts research and policy analysis on college access, student success and social inequality issues. Clients include MDRC, The Institute for Higher Education Policy, the California Partnership to Achieve Student Success, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Pell Institute for the Study of Higher Education Opportunity, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education. Prior to entering the consulting profession, Dr. Price was director of higher education research at the Lumina Foundation for Education. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from American University, and holds a master's degree from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor and a bachelor's degree from Duke University. He is the author of Borrowing Inequality: Race, Class and Student Loans (Lynne Rienner, 2004). Brenda Ruot, a native Western New Yorker, is a Ph.D. student and Dr. Kimberly Rogers' graduate assistant in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at SUNY, University at Buffalo. Previously, Brenda worked as a data analyst for a polling and market research firm in Washington, DC and earned her M.A. in political science from the University of Rochester. Her research interests include the impact of financial aid and other policies on access and success for low-income students. Patrizio Piraino is completing his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Siena, Italy. For the last two years, he has been at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to participate in a research project-Assessing Equity and Excellence in Public Higher Education-funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Since last October, Mr. Piraino has also been a research affiliate with Statistics Canada through a project regarding the intergenerational transmission of socio-economic status. While labor economics is his major research field, his studies are conducted in a very multi-disciplinary environment. His main purpose is to investigate "hard-to-reverse" social disadvantages and the mechanisms through which economic status is transmitted from parents to children. Micro-data analysis has played a major role in his research, with a specific focus on survey and administrative data. Mr. Piraino's background also includes exposure to multi-country data sets, from both developed and developing countries. Lashawn Richburg-Hayes is a Senior Associate in the Young Adults and Postsecondary Education Policy Area for MDRC. Richburg-Hayes' current research focuses on measuring various effects of new forms of financial aid, enhanced student services, and curricular and instructional innovations on community college retention and credit accumulation and nonexperimental methods of data analysis. Richburg-Hayes is a lead investigator for the following MDRC projects: Opening Doors, Achieving the Dream, and the Project on Devolution and Urban Change. Richburg-Hayes earned a B.S. degree from the Industrial and Labor Relations School of Cornell University. She received her Ph.D. in economics in 2000 from Princeton University. While in graduate school, she won numerous research grants, including a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant, and several fellowships, including the Department of Economics' Graduate Prize and the Woodrow Wilson Society Fellowship. Her dissertation, Do the Poor Pay More for Food? Three Essays on the Existence of a Poor Price Differential, won the National Economic Association's 2002 Rhonda M. Williams Dissertation Award. Kimberly Rogers is an assistant professor of higher education in the Department of Educational, Leadership, and Policy at SUNY-Buffalo. Her research interests are in the areas of higher education policy, economics, and finance. Her particular interest is in examining state, federal, and institutional policies that affect access, choice, and equity in postsecondary education. She is particularly fascinated by those students who begin their studies at community colleges, the gateway to higher education for many students who face academic and/or financial challenges. Kimberly holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education from the Pennsylvania State University, a master's degree in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from Harvard University, and a bachelor's degree in French from the University of South Carolina. Heather Rowan-Kenyon is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, where she coordinates the Student Affairs Practice in Higher Education program. Her research focuses on issues of issues related to college access and success, particularly for individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Prior to joining the faculty, she was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Maryland. She has also worked at Mount St. Mary's College as the Assistant Dean of Students. Heather received her Ph.D. in Education Policy and Leadership from the University of Maryland, her M.A. in College Student Personnel from Bowling Green State University and her B.S. in Secondary Education/Social Studies from the University of Scranton. Matthew P. Steinberg will be a first year Ph.D. candidate at the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, where he will be a pre-doctoral educational fellow with the University of Chicago Committee on Education. Mr. Steinberg recently completed his Masters in Public Affairs at the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he received the Director's Book Award. Mr. Steinberg is a former investment banker who later taught fifth grade as a member of the New York City Teaching Fellows. He holds an M.S.Ed. in Elementary Education from The City College of New York and a B.A. in Economics and Sociology from the University of Virginia. Mr. Steinberg's research interests include educational privatization, market-based educational reform, and issues of access and affordability in higher education. He has published a series of articles evaluating the Supplemental Educational Services provision of the No Child Left Behind Act and has worked on developing a model to estimate the relative performance of colleges and universities in attracting low-income undergraduate students. Matt Steiner is a senior research analyst at Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation (TG). He began working at TG in 1990 as a student intern while seeking a master's degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT-Austin. During his 17 years as a researcher at TG, he's conducted studies on student loan default, debt burden, and forbearance use. He was also instrumental in building TG's online default aversion tool named IDA (Integrated Default Aversion). Christopher Teran is a Management Analyst for the Department of Student Financial Aid at Texas A&M University. He serves as a researcher, statistician, and data analyst. Chris designs surveys and evaluations, consults with operation processes, generates data reports, develops and analyzes scholarship awarding and loan default prevention models, and provides general statistical analyses and interpretation for department staff. He also conducts demographic profiles of state and local areas, and assists with financial aid outreach development efforts. Alex Usher is the Vice-President (Research) and Director (Canada) of the Educational Policy Institute (EPI), a non-partisan research organization dedicated to improving access to, and quality in, higher education. His main current activity is managing the MESA (Measuring the Effectiveness of Student Assistance) project. Previously, Alex was the first national director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations (1995-6), served as a researcher and lobbyist for the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (1996-98), worked as a consultant for the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada and the Government of Canada (1998-9), and was instrumental in the complex intergovernmental negotiations at the birth of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation (1999-2000). Immediately prior to joining EPI, Mr. Usher was the Director of Research and Program Development (2000-3) for the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. Alex is a graduate of McGill University and Carleton University. Alex lives in Toronto with his son, Benjamin, who knows more about European football than any other 9-year old on earth. Kristan Venegas is Director of the Masters Programs and Assistant Professor, University of Southern California. An Assistant Professor in the Rossier School of Education and a Research Associate in the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis at USC, her research focuses on college access and financial aid for low-income students of color. Dr. Venegas' work has been supported by the James Irvine Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, the College Board, and the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Aid. Her recent publications have been featured in American Academic, American Behavioral Scientist, and Journal of Student Financial Aid. Jeff Webster joined the Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation in 1986 and currently serves as the Assistant Vice President for Research and Analytical Services. His department produces portfolio analyses; reference publications for schools, lenders and policymakers; public policy reports; and market research. Jeff has worked on research projects for a variety of organizations including the City of Austin, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, and the Texas Employment Commission. He has a Bachelor's degree from Kenyon College and a Master's degree from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at University of Texas at Austin. Christina Chang Wei is a Senior Research Associate at MPR Associates, Inc., an education policy and research firm based in Berkeley, California. She has conducted several studies for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), focusing primarily on financial aid in postsecondary education. Her work has included analyses of trends in college pricing, changes in receipt of financial aid and in financial aid policies over time, the effects of tuition and financial aid on net prices, the demographic characteristics and persistence rates of Pell Grant recipients, and the policies affecting students who are considered independent for financial aid purposes. Previously, she acquired experience in financial aid policy and analysis in the student financial support unit at the system-wide office of the University of California. Ms. Wei holds a master's degree in Public Policy and a bachelor's degree in Psychology with Highest Honors from the University of California at Berkeley. Jennie H. Woo is a senior economist in EDFUND's Research and Policy Analysis Department. In ten years at California's loan guaranty agency, she has done research and developed predictive scoring models for default and default recovery behavior. She has also examined financial aid issues in higher education including investment in education, access to education, student debt, student persistence and the causes of student loan default. For three years she also served as the employee representative on EDFUND's Board of Directors. She received a B.A. with Honors in Psychology from Swarthmore College and earned master's and doctoral degrees in the Economics of Education from Harvard University. David Wright's professional life has centered around turning data into useful information for policy decision making at the institutional, state, and national levels. In August 2006 he took on a state leadership role with the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, where he serves as Associate Executive Director for Policy, Planning, and Research. David's return to his native South was preceded by work as senior researcher for the national association of State Higher Education Executive Officers, where he led the State Higher Education Finance project, an annual examination of state tax effort and higher education funding trends. A doctoral candidate at Florida State University, David is a past president of the Florida Association for Institutional Research and an alumnus of the Associates Program of the National Center for Public Policy in Higher Education. Binzhen Wu is an assistant professor at Tsinghua University in P.R. China. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Economics in University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research field is public economics, applied econometrics, and education. She graduated last year and her dissertation research was about the effects of financial aid policies, including how financial aid affects household saving behavior and why families borrow much more than in previous years to finance higher education. |
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