Princeton Researchers Awarded Funding for Innovative Education Research Projects

Mar 08 2019
By B. Rose Kelly
Source Woodrow Wilson School

A group of researchers at Princeton University will receive funding to work on innovative, cross-disciplinary education research projects over the next two academic years.

More than $300,000 was awarded to Anne Catena, Michael Celia, Adam Kapor, Christopher Neilson, Daniel Rubenstein, and Maria Micaela Sviatschi by the Overdeck Education Innovation Fund.

The Overdeck Innovation Fund was created by Overdeck Family Foundation, which donated over $1 million to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs to support cross-disciplinary research projects across campus involving quantitative data analysis.

Funds will be distributed for the projects below.

  • “Field-based Environmental Science with Teachers: Transferring Scientific Processes to Teachers and Assessing Learning Effectiveness.” Rubenstein, Celia, and Catena are principal investigators of the project, which will train STEM teachers and analyze the impacts of that training. They received $43,700 in funding.
     
  • “Experimental Evidence on Reducing Gender-Based Violence at Schools and Increasing Girls’ Human Capital.” Sviatschi is a principal investigator along with Sofia Amarel, University of Munich; Aixa Garcia-Ramos, University of Passau; Selim Gulesci, Bocconi University; and Alejandra Ramos, Trinity College in Dublin. This project will look at the social contexts that impede learning and affect educational outcomes. They received $175,100 in funding.
     
  • “How the Design of School Choice System Affects Welfare and Student Outcomes.” Neilson and Kapor are principal investigators along with Seth Zimmerman from the University of Chicago. This project will investigate how school choice affects educational outcomes for students. They received $85,000 in funding.

“These researchers are extremely deserving of funding from the Overdeck Innovation Fund, which was created by Overdeck Family Foundation to support innovative education research at Princeton,” said Cecilia Rouse, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, the Lawrence and Shirley Katzman and Lewis and Anna Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education and professor of economics and public affairs. “We were especially pleased with the breadth and wide range of projects and the impact we expect them to have in the policy arena.”

The Overdeck Family Foundation

The Overdeck Family Foundation was established in 2011 by John and Laura Overdeck with the goal of providing all children the opportunity to unlock their potential. The Foundation funds research and organizations that measurably enhance education inside and outside the classroom. Laura (Bilodeau) Overdeck graduated from Princeton University in 1991 and currently serves on the Woodrow Wilson School’s Advisory Council, the Board of Trustees at Princeton University, and the Department of Astrophysical Sciences’ Advisory Council.