Bush School Dean Mark Welsh has announced that three members of the School’s faculty have been awarded academic professorships and a fellowship.
BRYAN/COLLEGE STATION, TX – Bush School Dean Mark Welsh has announced that three members of the School’s faculty have been awarded academic professorships and a fellowship.
Dr. Kalena Cortes, Associate Professor in the Department of Public Service and Administration, has been named the Verlin and Howard Kruse ’52 Founders Professor. Associate Professor Ren Mu has been named to the Robert H. and Judy Ley Allen Professorship, and Associate Professor Joanna Lahey received the C. Boyden Gray Faculty Fellowship. Dr. Lahey is a faculty member in the Department of Public Service and Administration and Dr. Mu is a faculty member in the Department of International Affairs.
Dr. Cortes joined the Bush School in 2011 and has been widely recognized for her scholarship. Her work focuses on issues of equity and access in PK-12 and postsecondary education, has been published in leading journals, and is broadly cited. She has been named a Research Associate of the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, MA, and a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. Her work has also been highlighted in a variety of popular press outlets, including The Atlantic, Inside Higher Ed, Education Week, the Houston Chronicle, and the Washington Post.
Associate Professor Joanna Lahey received the C. Boyden Gray Faculty Fellowship. Dr. Lahey is known for her teaching abilities and supervision of capstone projects. Her well-designed core courses on quantitative methods have been recognized for their excellence by students and her peers. In 2017, she received the Women’s Progress Faculty Award, which is given annually as part of the Accountability, Climate and Equity (ACE) awards program to TAMU faculty members dedicated to fostering an environment supportive to the needs of women and providing class content and lectures that are inclusive in their approach and sensitivity to women’s issues. In 2019, she was named an NBER Research Associate by the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Dr. Ren Mu has been named the Robert H. and Judy L. Allen Professor in recognition of her distinguished record in both teaching and research. During her twelve years at the Bush School, Dr. Mu has published extensively in peer-reviewed and other academic journals on development economics. Her work is truly multi-topical, with publications in journals that span the field of development economics—health economics, population economics, and agricultural economics—and also extend to other fields, such as environmental science. Since coming to the Bush School, Professor Mu has received over $230,000 in funding from external sources, including a $100,000 award from the World Bank, demonstrating that her significant work has considerable policy implications.
“We congratulate these excellent faculty members on this success and for the important work they are doing in educating our students while also conducting research that has major application in the academic, education, and business communities,” said Dean Welsh.
