MSU education researchers named as top national influencers

January 9, 2019

Researchers at universities make a great impact on education practice and policy through their work. And again this year, several Michigan State University scholars made the national list of scholars considered to have the highest influence.

Rick Hess’s 2019 Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, published in his Education Week blog, named six MSU faculty members among the top-200. That places MSU among the leading 10 schools where more than half of all Edu-Scholars on the list are concentrated.

The rankings are calculated based on scores in nine categories, such as citations via Google Scholar, news coverage, online mentions and books. The list is compiled from last year’s list of scholars plus at-large selections by a committee of scholars.

The MSU faculty members noted on the 200-person list for 2019 are:

  • Barbara Schneider, John A. Hannah Chair and University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education and Department of Sociology (#67, tie)
  • William Schmidt, University Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for the Study of Curriculum Policy (#103)
  • Katharine Strunk, Clifford E. Erickson Distinguished Chair in Education, professor of education policy and co-director of the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative, or EPIC (#150, tie)
  • Joshua Cowen, associate professor of education policy and the founder and co-director of EPIC (#184)
  • Sarah Reckhow, associate professor of political science (#192, tie)
  • Scott Imberman, professor of economics and education (#197)

Of note, Strunk jumped from #199 to #150 in the last year.

The Spartan influence

With MSU, only three other institutions in the top 10 for Edu-Scholars are public: University of California, Los Angeles (13 scholars), UC Berkeley (9) and University of Virginia (9).

MSU’s showing on the Public Presence list is even greater when you consider those who are alumni or former students of the MSU College of Education. Alumni include: Okhee Lee, Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Christopher Lubienski and David E. Kirkland.

Former MSU faculty members on the list include Richard Elmore, Yong Zhao, David Labaree, Stephen Raudenbush, Nell Duke, David Cohen, Aaron Pallas, Donald Heller and Ron Zimmer.

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