Fellows

Daniel March is a PhD student in the Measurement and Evaluation program at Teachers College, Columbia University. He previously worked as a data analyst for an education research firm, modeling postsecondary enrollment, retention, and graduation outcomes. At Teachers College, March is conducting descriptive analyses of dual enrolled students at the state and institution levels, highlighting disparities in outcomes by race, gender, and socio-economic status. March is also using natural language processing techniques to analyze college students’ spoken responses to probability word problems, ultimately aiming to identify problem-solving strategies that are associated with knowledge of elementary probability. 

March previously taught English for three years. He worked for one year as an ESL teacher at a charter school in Newark, New Jersey and for two years as an English teaching assistant at an elementary school in Taiwan as part of a Fulbright grant. March holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from Johns Hopkins University and a master’s degree in education policy from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

Bianca Onwukwe is a PhD student in the Economics and Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her primary research interests are centered on marginalized and underserved student populations. She is especially interested in the relationship between parental incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline, and its effect on postsecondary school attainment.

At Teachers College, Onwukwe is involved in a randomized controlled trial exploring the impact of Federal Work Study programs on academic outcomes. Prior to joining TC, she worked as a data specialist for the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Before joining DCPS, Onwukwe was a fellow within the Office of Tax Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. She obtained a BA in economics from the University of Maryland, and an MPP and data science certificate from George Washington University.

Thea Dowrich is a PhD student in the Economics and Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research explores the impact of educational interventions on labor market outcomes for formerly incarcerated individuals. She also studies the non-monetary effects of affirmative action policies through evaluating targeted students’ marriage outcomes.

Prior to joining TC, Dowrich was an associate consultant at Mastercard Data & Services, where she designed and analyzed business experiments for financial services institutions and retail clients. While in college, she worked at StepUp Durham supporting employment readiness training and wrote a thesis evaluating North Carolina’s local reentry councils. Dowrich holds a BA in public policy from Duke University.

As a PEAR fellow, Thea works on the CUNY Policy Lab project evaluating the skills students acquire from their college courses and its impact on their labor market outcomes.

Pascale Mevs is a PhD student studying sociology and education in the Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has over a decade of experience in education roles in the government and nonprofit sectors, including at the New York City Department of Education, the New York City Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity, and Living Cities, a national nonprofit dedicated to increasing racial economic justice in cities across America. As a PEAR Fellow, Pascale has been partnering with the Virginia Community College System to analyze the implementation of the Get a Skill, Get a Job, Get Ahead (G3) last-dollar scholarship program and has contributed to several briefs and publications on the topic. 

Through her dissertation, Pascale intends to study how adult education and workforce development programs at community colleges can contribute to closing racial income and wealth gaps. She holds an AA in liberal arts from Queensborough Community College, a BS in secondary English education from New York University, and an MA in urban education policy from Brown University

Mindy Rosengarten is pursuing a PhD in developmental psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University with Tyler Watts and Kimberly Noble as her advisors. Rosengarten’s current research utilizes meta-analytic data to examine the long-term effects of educational interventions on students’ academic trajectories. Her work also examines the effects of early childhood public policy on maternal education and employment. 

Rosengarten recently completed a research fellowship with the Minnesota Early Childhood Longitudinal Data System. In this role, Rosengarten developed a dataset to track Minnesota birth parents' use of public programs and subsequent returns to education post-birth.

Previously, Rosengarten was a research coordinator at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Brazelton Touchpoints Center, where she supported evaluations of grants targeting early education, maternal health, and family economic stability. Earlier, Rosengarten was a preschool teacher in Boston.

Rosengarten holds a BA in psychological and brain sciences from Washington University in St. Louis and an MA in child study and human development from Tufts University.

Victor Sanchez is a PhD student in the Economics and Education program at Teacher College, Columbia University. He specializes in the intersections between higher education, public policy, teacher training, and international teacher labor markets. The focus of his current work is on understanding the disparities in cost for teacher board exams and the local labor market responses to the increased supply of international teachers with J-1 visas.

As a senior research assistant at the Community College Research Center, he has helped recruit study participants and coordinate data-sharing agreements, prepared application data for analyses and randomization,  implemented the study’s professional development intervention, facilitated the data transfer processes, and is currently conducting parts of the study’s quantitative analyses for an RCT on instructor technology use in the classroom.

Prior to becoming a PEAR Fellow, Sanchez was engaged in a Master’s of Public Policy at the University of Virginia. While there, Sanchez worked as a graduate teaching assistant for research methods and policy analysis classes and as a research assistant for EdPolicy Works; his work at EdPolicy Works centered on studying the barriers of increasing the capacity of community college nursing programs, improving the accessibility and utility of the college scorecard website, and collecting data on each state’s unemployment insurance job search requirements. Prior to his studies at UVA, he earned a BA in public policy and administration at Brigham Young University-Idaho while serving as a member of the Ririe City Council.

Mycaeri Atkinson is pursuing a PhD in Education Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. During her time at Teachers College, she has researched higher education workforce programs, ethnic studies course requirements, and credit for prior learning policies. She has presented various research projects at conferences such as SHEEO, SREE, NBEA, and ASHE. She has also been awarded the Morton T. Embree Award for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning for her work as a data analysis teaching assistant.

Prior to receiving the PEAR Fellowship at TC, Mycaeri was a policy fellow at Research for Action, where she conducted research on postsecondary education finance and access. At Research for Action, Atkinson conducted studies on promise programs, racial equity, community college, immigration policy, student success funding, and emergency funding.

Previously, Atkinson was a research analyst and writer for the Virginia Department of Health and a third grade teacher in the Teach For America Greater New Orleans Corps. She received a BA from New York University and an MA from Brown University’s Urban Education Policy program. At Brown, Mycaeri assisted with community democracy research with an emphasis on racial equity, intersectionality, and imbalances in deliberation.

Erin Huffer Kramer is a PhD student in economics and education at Teachers College. She studies the long-term effects of public investments in education, particularly whether early learning environments affect students’ educational and labor market choices in the future. Her PEAR policy practice apprenticeship explores whether a state-funded STEM scholarship supports postsecondary degree attainment and aligns with the state’s workforce development goals.

Huffer Kramer holds a BA in economics and public policy from Dartmouth College. Before pursuing her graduate studies, she worked as a research assistant at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, where she studied various topics related to fiscal federalism, including the intersection of state, local, and federal tax and spending programs.

Tia Jane Monahan is a PhD student in economics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She specializes in the intersections between higher education, public policy, and labor markets in the U.S., focusing on the many economic and social factors that impact college student decision-making and institutions’ abilities to better serve their students. In her work as a senior research assistant at the Community College Research Center, she helped lead quantitative analysis for both a survey report and an expenditure report on COVID-19 emergency relief funding and helped run an RCT on instructor technology use in the classroom. She has presented at and organized sessions for conferences including APPAM, AERA, and AEFP. She also recently received the economics and education doctoral student small research grant to support her dissertation research regarding the effects of Dobbs-era abortion bans on student migration decisions.

Monahan holds an MA in economics from Columbia University and a BS in economics with a minor in media studies from the University of Oregon Clark Honors College. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she held various educator positions ranging from designing and running college-level courses to test prep tutoring to family ski instructing.

Jessica (Jessie) Steiger is a PhD student in the Sociology and Education program at Teachers College. Her research focuses on higher education policy at the federal and state levels, with an emphasis on dual enrollment, transfer, and student success. As a component of her doctoral training, she worked with the Office of Postsecondary Education at the US Department of Education in developing a playbook on using data to drive equitable improvement in student success. She also led the planning for the White House’s Classroom-to-Career Summit under the Biden-Harris administration. 

Steiger holds an MA in educational theory and policy and a BS in education and public policy from the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Steiger worked at the New Jersey Office of the Secretary of Higher Education (OSHE) supporting a wide portfolio of topics related to dual enrollment, mental health, and transfer. She also managed OSHE’s legislative affairs at the state and federal level

Selena Cardona is a PhD student at Teachers College in the Sociology and Education program. Prior to receiving the PEAR Fellowship, she served as a staff assistant in the New York City office of U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer and worked as a research consultant for the Postsecondary National Policy Institute (PNPI) in Washington, DC. At PNPI, she was also a 2019 Summer Scholar. In addition to this, she has taught English abroad on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Bogotá, Colombia.

In 2024, she was a Summer Associate at the RAND Corporation. She also completed a practice/policy apprenticeship at MDRC in the fall of 2024. Her research interests include inequities in college access, financial aid policy, workforce development, the role of higher education as a tool for upward social mobility, social stratification, and the evolving role of the community college.

Cardona is a graduate of New York City public schools, where she was a 2013 recipient of the Gates Millennium Scholarship. Cardona holds an AB in sociology from Cornell University and an MA in education policy from Teachers College. As a master’s student, she specialized in data analysis and research methods and higher education policy.

Melissa Herman is a PhD student in the education policy program at Teachers College. During her time at TC, she has conducted mixed methods research on policies focused on college access, enrollment and transfer, especially focused on first-generation college students. She has presented this work at conferences such as AERA and SREE. Before enrolling at TC, she was the director of Graduate NYC, a college access and completion initiative housed at the City University of New York. In this role, she led Graduate NYC’s flagship project, the College Completion Innovation Fund, a collaborative fund supporting innovation in college persistence and higher education.

Prior to joining Graduate NYC, Herman was the associate director for partnership support at PENCIL, overseeing a team of partnership managers and developing the organization’s college and career readiness programming. During her tenure at PENCIL, she worked extensively within the New York City public school system on strategic partnership development, as well as college readiness and project-based learning programming for students. Prior to PENCIL, Herman worked at the International Organization For Adolescents within their youth development initiative.

A native New Yorker, Herman holds a bachelor of arts in psychology and history from the University of Pennsylvania and a master of public administration from New York University.

CJ Libassi is a PhD student at Teachers College, Columbia University, studying college access, financial aid, and institutional accountability. From 2022 to 2024, he served as a Senior Advisor in the Office of the Chief Economist at the US Department of Education, where he conducted empirical analysis using administrative data to inform regulatory decisions and policy development.

Prior to joining CCRC, Libassi did research and policy work at the College Board, analyzing national datasets to inform strategic decisions; at the Center for American Progress, focusing on institutional accountability and student loans; and at the University of Michigan's Education Policy Initiative, supporting experimental and quasi-experimental studies. His research has appeared in the American Economic Review and the Economics of Education Review.

Earlier in his career, Libassi taught English in Madrid as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant and served as a foreign language teacher in Prince George's County Public Schools through Teach For America. He holds a BA in English, Spanish, and philosophy from the University of Scranton, a master of arts in teaching from American University, and a master of public policy from the University of Michigan.

Taylor Myers is a PhD candidate in Education Policy at Teachers College, with a concentration on the impacts of attending and completing college on the lives of students and their families, particularly among first-generation and returning college students. During this time, Myers was formerly a Senior Research Assistant at the Community College Research Center (CCRC), contributing to the guided pathways team, and MASS Transfer team. Prior to her work at CCRC, Myers was a Policy and Research Analyst for California Competes, where she supported the development of statewide higher education policy recommendations and analyzed the effects of previous interventions on special student populations in regions across the state.

Currently, Myers is the Assistant Director of Research and Policy at the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP). In this role, she leads IHEP’s Postsecondary Data Collaborative‘s research and policy agenda. Myers is also continuing her doctoral research, focusing on the experiences and perceptions of adults who return to college and students who are parenting while completing degrees. 

Prior to earning her PhD at Teachers College, Myers received a bachelor of science degree in Health Education and Community Health from the University of Florida and an MPP in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Astrid Pineda conducts quantitative research on the intersection between education and economic opportunity, with a focus on causal analysis. Before coming to Teachers College, Pineda worked as a research fellow at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), assessing the impact of the IDB’s work in Mexico, Argentina, and Haiti. Prior to that, she worked with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) on impact evaluations of education interventions in the Dominican Republic.

Pineda is a PhD candidate in the Economics and Education PhD program at Teachers College. She holds an MPA/ID from the Harvard Kennedy School and a BA in economics from Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic.