Faculty Directory

Shaun M. Dougherty (Ed.D., quantitative policy analysis, Harvard University), is a Professor of Education & Policy at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education & Human Development, the Chair of the Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment Department, and the Director of the Catholic Education Research Initiative. His research and teaching interests focus on education policy analysis, causal program evaluation and cost analysis, and the economics of education, with an emphasis on career and technical education, educational accountability policies, and the application of regression discontinuity research designs. Across these substantive areas, he emphasizes how education can address human capital development and how this varies by race, class, gender, and disability. Dougherty is a former Senior Advisor in the U.S. Department of Education, and a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Dougherty’s work has been published in leading journals and has been cited by major media outlets. He has received research funding from IES, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Institute for Research on Poverty, which also recognized him as an Early Career Scholar. Dougherty is part of the network lead for the IES-funded Career and Technical Education Research Network, as well a co-PI on the multi-state CTE Policy Exchange. Dougherty continues to serve as a Strategic Data Project Faculty Adviser through the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, and has conducted applied policy analysis with several states and large districts, as well as the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and the Manhattan Institute. For the period spanning 2023 through 2025 he is also the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.