Four Batten Professors Ranked as Nation’s Most Influential Education Scholars
Batten School professors Daphna Bassok, Ben Castleman, Sarah Turner and Jim Wyckoff were among 200 scholars nationwide to rank as highly influential in education policy, according to Education Week.
2022 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings. The list, compiled by a distinguished committee of 33 members who considered over 20,000 qualified scholars, ranks the top university-based scholars in the U.S. who had the biggest influence on educational practice and policy in the last year.
Bassok, Castleman, Turner and Wyckoff were among the 200 scholars deemed by the committee to be highly influential. All four faculty members, each of whom holds a joint appointment at the UVA Frank Batten School and UVA’s School of Education and Human Development, have appeared on the list previously and moved up in score and rank this year.
“At the Batten School, when we think about scholarship, we think about impact,” said Jay Shimshack, Batten’s associate dean for academic affairs. “These four faculty members are making a real difference in the world. They are affecting policy, practice, research and public dialogue. We are thrilled to see them recognized, and we are proud to have them on our faculty.”
The 2022 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings weighs activity in many different metrics such as social authority, Congressional Record mentions, syllabus points and other diverse indicators. The goal is, as Education Week’s Rick Hess and Mike Goldstein state, to “spur discussion about the nature of constructive public influence: Who’s doing it, how much it matters, and how to gauge a scholar’s contribution.”
