Long Named Academic Dean

Dean Kathleen McCartney recently announced that Professor Bridget Terry Long will serve as the next academic dean at HGSE.

“I am so honored to serve the school as academic dean. This is a tremendous place with smart, hard-working people committed to improving education,” Long said. “I look forward to supporting their efforts and helping with the governance of the school.”

Long will begin in her role as academic dean on July 1.

“I am enormously pleased to announce that Bridget Terry Long has agreed to serve as the next academic dean. Given the transitions in the dean’s office, HGSE needs a proven and dedicated leader like Bridget,” McCartney wrote in a letter to the community. “She will bring to this position a wealth of expertise in education and policy, a track record of research that has directly improved student outcomes, and a demonstrated capacity for exceptional service to the school. In addition to her significant research and teaching commitments, Bridget has served the school as faculty director of the Ed.D. Program and as chair of the Ph.D. steering committee this past academic year, and she has been an active member of the dean’s cabinet.”

An economist with expertise in access to higher education and college student success, Long joined the Ed School as an assistant professor in 2000, and became a professor in 2009. Long’s research examines the transition from high school to higher education and beyond, focusing on college access and choice, factors that influence student outcomes, and the behavior of postsecondary institutions. Some of her projects have included: “Improving Access to College Information and Financial Aid,” a study on the effects of simplifying the financial aid application process; “Understanding Barriers and Examining Interventions,” a series of research studies focused on college enrollment and completion for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and  “Addressing the Problem of Insufficient High School Preparation,” which focuses on state efforts to regulate college remedial programs and reforms that attempt to reduce the need for remediation.

In June 2010, Long was appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as a member of the National Board of Education Sciences, the advisory panel of the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education. She was elected chair of the board in October 2011. She is also on the boards of directors for the MDRC education subcommittee, Soldiers Field Park Children Center, Commonwealth Corporation of Massachusetts, and Commonwealth of Massachusetts Public Education Nominating Committee.

She is currently a faculty research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and served as a visiting scholar at the New England Public Policy Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Long received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the Harvard University Department of Economics and her A.B. from Princeton University.