2007 - 2008 Academic Year Fellows
Elizabeth Gunderson
Elizabeth is an Associate Professor in Psychology at Temple University. She received her doctorate from the Department of Psychology in 2012. Elizabeth investigates the cognitive and socio-emotional factors affecting the academic achievement of young children, especially in the field of mathematics. She is currently investigating how verbal interactions facilitate the development of number concepts in preschoolers and the relation between visuospatial skills and a child’s early number knowledge. In addition, she is investigating how teacher’s and children’s anxieties influence students’ math outcomes, and how the children’s own beliefs about the plasticity of their math and reading abilities affect their achievement motivation.
Daniel Kimmel
Daniel is a User Experience Researcher at Meta Platforms, studying the dynamics of social interactions in a community messaging context for the Messenger app. He was formerly Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yeshiva University, where he researched education, violence, and health, with a particular interest in how school violence affects students’ health and academic outcomes; he also taught extensively, including designing courses on “Violence, Schools, and Education” and “Education and Society” for Yeshiva’s Core Curriculum. Daniel received his Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology in 2016, his A.M. from the University of Chicago’s Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences, and his A.B. from the University of Chicago College. Besides IES, he won fellowship awards from the American Education Research Association and the National Academy of Education / Spencer Foundation.
Daniel Kreisman
Daniel Kreisman is an Associate Professor of Economics at Georgia State University in Atlanta. His work is focused on education, and on his best days, that work can impact policy. He is a founder of CTEx – a consortium of researchers and state partners working together to inform the future of CTE policy.
Dan has a PhD and MPP in Public Policy from the University of Chicago, and was a postdoc at Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. He really wanted to be a philosopher, but wasn’t good enough. This made him think a lot about absolute and comparative advantage, so now he is an economist. Before graduate school Dan taught high school English in New Orleans.
Amy (Proger) Feygin
Amy (Proger) Feygin is a principal researcher at American Institutes for Research (AIR) who works with state and local education agencies on research, evaluation, and technical assistance projects. She is a skilled project director with experience leading large-scale federal grants and contracts. She is the deputy director of the current Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southwest contract, providing vision, guidance, and oversight to the project. Previously she served as the applied research and evaluation task lead for REL Southwest and REL Midwest, overseeing a total of 28 applied research projects. Her passion is supporting colleges to use research to increase completion rates. She directed an IES-funded study of college advising strategies, which included a policy and practice scan, systematic review of the evidence, and gaps analysis. She also works with the City Colleges of Chicago to track student progress through workforce programs. Dr. Feygin is skilled in a range of study designs, data collection approaches, and analysis methods. As a researcher, she prioritizes collaborating with practitioners to support their use of evidence through conducting training and coaching to facilitate interpretation and application of research findings to problems of practice, presenting at practitioner-oriented conferences, and publishing findings in accessible formats to support access to evidence. She is a certified reviewer for the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Group Design Standards (Version 4.1). Dr. Feygin holds a doctorate in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago.
Gerardo Ramirez
Gerardo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at Ball State University. Gerardo obtained his PhD from the University of Chicago, where he studied the role of teachers and parents in shaping the math attitudes of their students, as well as reappraisal techniques to help students cope with anxiety during testing situations. Gerardo currently studies the role of frustration, empathy and cultural capital in shaping students’ success and persistence.
Matthew Steinberg
Dr. Matthew P. Steinberg is an Associate Professor of Education and Public Policy in the College of Education and Human Development and the Schar School of Policy and Government and the Director of EdPolicy Forward: The Center for Education Policy at George Mason University. Matthew is a Faculty Affiliate with the Center for Micro-Economic Policy Research and The Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, both at George Mason University. Matthew is an Affiliated Researcher with the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, a Faculty Affiliate with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and an IUR Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Urban Research. A recipient of the 2016 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, Matthew received his PhD in public policy from the University of Chicago. Matthew’s research addresses issues of educational significance at the intersection of the economics of education and education policy, including: educator evaluation and human capital; accountability and urban school reform; education finance; and school safety and student discipline