Today the Regents of the University of Michigan approved Christina Weiland’s appointment as the inaugural Karl and Martha Kohn Professor of Social Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
With a gift from Hal and Carol Kohn and the Kohn Charitable Trust, the Ford School established the Karl and Martha Kohn Professorship of Social Policy to support research that advances social equity in the United States through education policy, with a focus on childhood development. This Professorship is part of the Kohn Collaborative for Social Policy.
“Chris is a force for so much good in early education policy,” said Ford School Dean Celeste Watkins-Hayes. “Her research collaborations have increased the quality of preschool programs in several cities, leading to measurable improvements for children and families. I am delighted with her appointment to a Ford School Kohn Professorship.”
Weiland also holds an appointment at the Marsal Family School of Education and co-directs the Ford School’s Education Policy Initiative and the University’s Causal Inference in Education Policy Research doctoral fellowship program.
"We know social inequities start very early in life,” said Weiland. “I am so honored to be part of this visionary, interdisciplinary hub for new thinking on real-world solutions to hard problems."
Weiland is a leading scholar whose research focuses on the effects of early childhood interventions and public policies on children’s development, especially on children within low-income households. She is particularly interested in the active ingredients that drive children’s gains in successful, at-scale public preschool programs. Weiland is engaged in long-standing research collaborations with practitioners, most notably in the Boston Public Schools Department of Early Childhood. She has also consulted for Governor Whitmer’s Universal Pre-kindergarten expansion, served as a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee on preschool curriculum, and prepared policy briefings for Seattle’s City Council, senior U.S. Department of Education officials, the U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee and the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pension.
Weiland’s research has been published in AERA Open, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Child Development, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and the Journal of Research in Educational Effectiveness, among other outlets. Her work has been recognized with a 2018 Association for Education Finance and Policy Early Career Award, a 2014 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, and a 2013 Best Dissertation Award from the Society for Research in Child Development.
Her work has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Foundation for Child Development, the Foundation for Child Development, Chile’s Ministry of Education, and the University of Michigan.
She holds an EdD (quantitative policy analysis in education) and an MA from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, as well as a BA from Dartmouth College.
About the Kohn Collaborative for Social Policy
Since 2018, Hal and Carol Kohn and the Kohn Charitable Trust have committed $17 million to the Ford School to establish the Kohn Collaborative for Social Policy, a hub that will catalyze interdisciplinary research and policy impact to promote social equity and inclusion for all U.S. residents. The collaborative consists of three pillars: Kohn Professors, Kohn Scholars, and policy impact. The Karl and Martha Kohn Professor of Social Policy is one of five Kohn professorships.
