Faculty & Staff Directory

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George
Hadijski

Program Associate, Center for Effective Lawmaking

George Hadijski is the Senior Program Associate at the Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL), a joint partnership between the Batten School and Vanderbilt University. He is responsible for increasing the use of CEL’s research by lawmakers, their staffs, and their influencers. 

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Sarah Hanks

Sarah
Hanks

Director of Career Services
Garrett L002A

Sarah Hanks is the Director of Career Services for the Frank Batten School. She has more than 15 years of experience in nonprofit capacity building, change management, and crisis recovery.

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Harry Harding

Harry
Harding

University Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy

Harry Harding is university professor emeritus and professor emeritus of public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, a senior fellow in the Miller Center of Public Affairs at UVA, and Adjunct Chair Professor in the College of Social Science at National Chengchi University in Taipei, where he holds a Yushan Scholarship. Harding is a specialist on Asia and U.S. - Asian relations.

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Ben Hartless

Ben
Hartless

Assistant Director of Information Technology
Garrett Hall L029

Ben Hartless is the assistant director of information technology at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Ben was born and raised an hour away in Lexington, Virginia where he worked at Washington and Lee University for thirteen years as a Technology Support Specialist. He also worked seven years at the Washington and Lee School of Law as the Director of Information Technology before beginning his new career at the Frank Batten School in Spring of 2020.

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Andrea Henry

Andrea
Henry

Events Manager
Garrett Hall

Andrea Henry is an experienced professional fulfilling the role as our Events Manager. A University of Virginia alumna, class of 2019, with a dual degree in Art History and Sociology, her educational and professional journey from UVA and post-graduation provided a solid foundation in strategic planning and effective communication, all of which contribute to her expertise in event management. In her spare time, she indulges in HBO shows or tries new restaurants and coffee shops around town.

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Gerald Higginbotham

Gerald
Higginbotham

Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Psychology

Gerald Higginbotham is an assistant professor of public policy and psychology at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Utilizing social and cultural psychological insights, Higginbotham researches the imprint of history on people’s modern social perceptions and policy attitudes, and the psychological underpinnings of how people perceive history and its consequences. 

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John Holbein

John
Holbein

Associate Professor of Public Policy, Politics, and Education; Shannon Center Mid-Career Fellow

John Holbein is an associate professor of public policy, politics, and education at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Holbein studies political participation, political inequality, democratic accountability, political representation, and education policy.

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Charles
Holt

Professor of Economics and Public Policy

Charles Holt is a professor of economics and public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the A. Willis Robertson Professor of Political Economy at the University of Virginia. Holt is also the current Director of the Experimental Economics Laboratory at Virginia, where he develops and programs the web-based VeconLab experiments that are widely used for teaching and research with over 90,000 participant logins per year.

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James Savage

James
Savage

Professor of Politics and Public Policy

James D. Savage is a professor of politics and public policy at the Batten School and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. His research and teaching focus on comparative budgetary, fiscal, and macroeconomic policy, with an emphasis on the United States, the European Union, Iraq and Japan. He is particularly interested in the development of macrobudgetary rules, procedures, and institutions in these countries, and how they influence fiscal outcomes.

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Abigail Scholer

Abigail
Scholer

Batten Family Bicentennial Distinguished Leadership Professor of Public Policy; Professor of Public Policy and Psychology
Garrett Hall

Abigail Scholer is Batten Family Bicentennial Distinguished Leadership Professor of Public Policy and professor of public policy and psychology at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Scholer studies fundamental and basic processes related to goal pursuit, decision-making, social regulation, motivated social cognition, and behavior change, with an aim for understanding how these basic processes can be leveraged to address societal challenges and improve people’s lives.

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Beth Schueler

Beth
Schueler

Associate Professor of Education and Public Policy

Beth Schueler is an associate professor of education and public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Schueler studies education policy, politics, and inequality with a focus on efforts to improve low-performing K-12 schools and districts.

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Eric Scorsone

Eric
Scorsone

Executive Director, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service; Associate Professor of Public Policy by Courtesy
2400 Old Ivy Road

Eric Scorsone is Executive Director of the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service and Associate Professor of Public Policy by Courtesy in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.  Scorsone has over 25 years of public service in academic settings, as well as many years’ experience in state and local government.  He has expertise in state and local public finance and administration and regional economics. 

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Lauren Shepherd

Lauren
Shepherd

Chief of Staff and Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives

Lauren Shepherd joined Batten in 2022, coming from Teach For America where she served as Managing Director, Chief of Staff to the Vice President of Executive Director Learning. Prior to that, she served as the Chief of Staff to the TFA Bay Area Executive Director and as Managing Director of Teacher Onboarding Strategy. Originally trained as a journalist, she has professional experience as a writer and reporter as well as many years involved in strategic and operational planning, project management, partnerships, and talent development. 

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Jay Shimshack

Jay
Shimshack

Professor of Public Policy and Economics

Jay Shimshack is a professor of public policy and economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Shimshack's research focuses on environmental regulation, environmental economics, corporate social behavior, and applied microeconomics for public policy. 

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William Shobe

William
Shobe

Research Professor Emeritus of Public Policy

William Shobe is research professor of public policy at the Batten School and the Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Shobe's current research includes emission market and auction design, environmental federalism, improved economic modeling of Virginia’s economy, state economic development incentives and state economic forecasting.

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Andrew Simon

Andrew
Simon

Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics
Garrett Hall

Andrew Simon is an assistant professor of public policy and economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. He is a public finance economist who studies the incidence of state and local public policies across individuals and geography. His current research focuses on higher education finance, such as the causes and consequence of state divestment in public colleges, as well as taxation, and employment policy. 

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Shelly Smith

Shelly
Smith

Professor of Nursing and Public Policy

Shelly Porter Smith is a professor of nursing and public policy at Batten. Prior to her appointment at UVA, Smith mentored faculty scholars in legislative advocacy, proposal and grant writing, and authoring policy briefs and white paper as a Translational Research Fellow in Residence at VCU in addition to serving as director of nursing graduate programs.  Smith is a long-time preceptor to UVA nurse practitioner master's students, and part of the Virginia Health Workforce Development Authority’s nursing preceptor incentive program work group.

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Ian
H.
Solomon

Dean and Professor of Practice in Public Policy
Garrett Hall

Ian H. Solomon is dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, where he leads a multidisciplinary faculty in creating new knowledge and developing leaders who can solve humanity’s greatest policy challenges. Trained as a lawyer, Solomon is a devoted student and teacher of both negotiation and conflict resolution.

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Allan Stam

Allan
Stam

University Professor of Public Policy and Politics

Allan C. Stam is a University Professor of public policy and politics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. His research focuses on the dynamics of armed conflict between and within states. Stam has also worked on several survey-based projects including surveys conducted in Russia, Rwanda, India and the United States.

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