Radha Jagannathan
Professor of Statistics, Rutgers Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
Dr. Jagannathan is Professor of Statistics at the Rutgers Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University. She is a Fulbright Scholar (Germany, 2010; Hungary, 2014) whose research on human capital development (especially on STEM disciplines), school-to-work transition, labor force attachment, poverty, and child welfare has received wide attention. Her many academic awards include the Jerome G. Rose Distinguished Teaching Award, Excellence in Teaching & Mentoring Award, and several Academic Excellence Awards from Rutgers University, the DAAD Award from the American- German Scholar Exchange Program, and the Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize from the University of Chicago. She has authored 4 books and over 175 journal articles and reports. Radha’s research has appeared in many economics, education and policy journals such as the Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Economics of Education Review, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Social Science Quarterly, Social Science and Medicine and Evaluation and Program Planning.
Dr. Jagannathan has evaluated numerous human capital and job training programs run by public, private, and non-profit sectors. She currently evaluates several youth services programs for Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Department of Education, and the NSF.
Radha has designed and implemented a human capital development program focusing on STEM skills for disadvantaged public school students entitled Nurture thru Nature (NtN). Structured as a classical experiment with random assignment of students to NtN and control groups, the program has shown considerable promise in increasing student achievement in science, mathematics and language arts in the participant group relative to the control group. Findings from this study have been published in the Economics of Education Review, Evaluation and Program Planning, Cambridge Journal of Education, and the Journal of Environmental Education. The NtN program has been replicated in Granada, Spain and Catania, Italy.
At the Bloustein School, Radha teaches courses on statistics, advanced econometrics, and program evaluation.