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 enrollment students, assessing measurement error between a widely used proxy for dual enrollment and three dual enrollment metrics. March is also designing a web application to help college staff visualize their own dual enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse. In addition, March studies racial and gender bias in large language models in postsecondary online discussion forums and is beginning dissertation research on strategies and misconceptions that arise as students attempt fraction subtraction problems.

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 research focuses on marginalized and underserved student populations, particularly the factors that shape students’ transitions from high school to work or postsecondary education. She is especially interested in how structural barriers influence postsecondary attainment, as well as the ways parental incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline affect educational outcomes.

At Teachers College (TC), 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 sits at the intersection of law, economics, and higher education, with a focus on police-community relationships and the impact of educational programs on incarcerated individuals.

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 for formerly incarcerated individuals 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, Dowrich worked on the CUNY Policy Lab project, evaluating the skills students acquire from their college courses and their impact on the students’ labor market outcomes.

Pascale Mevs Fitzgerald is a PhD candidate 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 is 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. She has also worked with the Aspen Institute on a research project to develop a playbook for policymakers and practitioners interested in short-term workforce programming.

In her dissertation, Pascale explores how workforce development programs at community colleges can help close 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 research examines how features of educational interventions and classrooms predict students' long-term outcomes. Her dissertation work, which is funded by the AERA/NSF dissertation fellowship, examines whether teacher quality predicts students' long-term achievement.

Rosengarten recently completed a research fellowship with the Minnesota Early Childhood Longitudinal Data System. In this role, Rosengarten developed a dataset to track use of public programs and subsequent returns to education among new mothers in Minnesota.

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 in her career, 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.

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 economics of higher education. The focus of his current work is on the labor market outcomes of community college students in bachelor's degree programs.

As a senior research assistant at the Community College Research Center, Victor assisted in recruitment, randomization, implementation, data processing and analysis, and report writing for a CCRC and Regional Education Laboratory (REL) Northwest experimental evaluation of a professional development course designed to improve teaching with technology in community colleges.

Prior to becoming a PEAR Fellow, Sanchez earned a master of public policy degree 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 a PhD candidate in education policy at Teachers College, Columbia University and a PEAR Fellow at the Community College Research Center (CCRC). She researches higher education policy, workforce development, and educational equity, with a particular focus on credit for prior learning, postsecondary access, and the implementation of policies that support adult and historically underserved learners. As a PEAR Fellow, Atkinson conducts mixed-methods research examining faculty perceptions, institutional implementation, and student outcomes related to credit for prior learning at the City University of New York. She has also contributed to research on Virginia's G3 workforce initiative and ethnic studies requirements in higher education.

Prior to joining Teachers College, Atkinson was a policy fellow at Research for Action, where she led and supported research on postsecondary finance, promise programs, racial equity, community colleges, immigration policy, and student success initiatives. Earlier in her career, she worked as a research analyst for the Virginia Department of Health and taught third grade as a Teach For America corps member in Greater New Orleans.

Atkinson holds a BA from New York University and an MA in urban education policy from Brown University. She is the recipient of Teachers College's Morton T. Embree Award for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning.

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 candidate in the Sociology and Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University and a PEAR Fellow with the Community College Research Center. Her research examines the intersection of higher education policy, organizational theory, and institutional collaboration, with a particular focus on how state policy shapes student pathways into and through postsecondary education.

Steiger’s dissertation explores three areas of higher education policy and practice: the organizing logic underlying state dual enrollment legislation, collaboration across four-year institutions to support transfer student success, and organizational factors influencing burnout among Title IX professionals. At CCRC, she contributes to research on dual enrollment policy, transfer, and student success, translating research into actionable policy and practice for states and institutions.

Steiger's research is informed by extensive experience in state higher education policy and governance, including leadership roles with the New Jersey Office of the Secretary of Higher Education. She holds an MA in educational theory and policy and a BS in education and public policy from The Pennsylvania State University.

Selena Cardona is a PhD candidate in the Sociology and Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her dissertation research focuses on how institutional support contexts shape community college students’ expectations and the organization of their transition to future educational and career pathways. As a PEAR fellow, she completed her apprenticeship in postsecondary education policy at MDRC and was a senior research assistant at the Community College Research Center. Her experience also includes a Summer Associateship at the RAND Corporation. Prior to receiving the PEAR fellowship, Cardona 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, where she was a 2019 Summer Scholar. Cardona also taught English abroad on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Bogotá, Colombia.

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, 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 earned his PhD in economics and education from Teachers College, Columbia University, in spring 2026. He is now a senior research associate at the PEER Center at American University, where he continues to work on higher education research and policy. His research focuses on 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. In addition to his PhD, 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 earned her PhD in education policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. - Her doctoral research focused on the experiences, perceptions, and impacts of adults who return to college and students who are parenting while completing degrees. Currently, Myers is a consultant, partnering with institutions, systems, and states to study issues in higher education.

Myers was formerly assistant director of research and policy at the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP). In this role, she led IHEP’s Postsecondary Data Collaborative‘s research and policy agenda. She was also a senior research assistant at the Community College Research Center (CCRC), contributing to the guided pathways team and the 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.

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 earned her PhD in economics and education from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2025. Since then, Pineda has worked as an economist at the World Bank, where she started as part of the Young Professionals Program. Prior to her doctoral studies, she 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. She also conducted research with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) on impact evaluations of education interventions in the Dominican Republic.

In addition to her PhD, Pineda 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.