Project Team
Michelle Van Noy (Principal Investigator) is Director of the Education and Employment Research Center at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers. She has extensive experience conducting research on STEM education and workforce development and leading large-scale research projects. She is PI on Pathways to Technician Careers an ATE-targeted research project examining student decision-making about programs and careers in information technology, and co-PI on an NSF project, Pathways to Science and Engineering Professions: Persistence and Career Choice for Bachelor’s and Master’s Graduates, Who Goes on? Who Doesn’t? and Why? She has conducted research on higher education labor market responsiveness, community college workforce education programs in a range of sectors, community college student outcomes, and employer perceptions of associate degrees for IT technicians. She served on the National Academy of Science’s committee on Barriers and Opportunities for 2-year and 4-year STEM degrees.
Mark D’Amico (Co-Principal Investigator) is a Professor of Higher Education, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Mark’s research centers on community college student success and workforce education, including the development of a noncredit typology that has been applied to multiple states and scholarly projects. Mark was a participant of the 2020 IPEDS Technical Review Panel on noncredit data, and published a recent paper on noncredit outcomes in partnership with the Iowa Department of Education. Prior to his current role, Mark served in senior leadership with a multi-campus college and a state technical college system.
Peter Bahrserves as Associate Professor in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan. Dr. Bahr is a nationally recognized scholar and expert on community colleges, student outcomes, and economic mobility. His research focuses on the role of public postsecondary institutions in creating and advancing educational and economic opportunities for socioeconomically disadvantaged students, marginalized students, students who are older than what is considered typical for undergraduates (i.e., adult-age students or older students), and citizens returning to society after incarceration. The goals of his work are to improve college completion rates for these students and maximize the economic value of the credentials that they earn. A distinguishing feature of his work is close collaboration with state policymakers and institutional leaders to ensure that the work is directly informing policy development aimed at reducing inequality, achieving educational attainment goals, improving workforce opportunities, and strengthening state economic vitality and growth.
Di Xu is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at UC, Irvine, and the faculty director of UCI’s Postsecondary Education Research & Implementation Institute. She is also a research affiliate at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research uses mixed research methods in assessing students’ educational pathways, success, and transition into the labor market, with a particular focus on students enrolled in community colleges.
Anjali Srivastava is a Researcher at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey’s Education and Employment Research Center (EERC). She is currently working on EERC’s State Noncredit Data Project as well as research and evaluation projects studying technical education and apprenticeships. Her research experience encompasses utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods in academic and nonprofit organizational settings.