Public Education Foundation has promoted Dr. Keith White to vice president of Research and Effectiveness. Since joining PEF 10 years ago, Dr. White has advanced the organization’s use of data to enable PEF to better serve students in Hamilton County Public Schools and to evaluate the impact of PEF programs such as Camp College, STEP UP Chattanooga, and Project Inspire.
Over the last two years, Dr. White has led the development of DegreeU, a free app that helps Hamilton County students identify colleges and post-secondary programs that they are likely to graduate from and that align with their career goals. This spring, Dr. White presented DegreeU at the national Pathways to Adult Success conference at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. White has made numerous other presentations across Tennessee and in the eastern US about collegegoing, high school graduation, and early grades literacy.
“PEF is delighted to recognize Keith’s extraordinary work with this promotion," said Dr. Dan Challener, PEF's president. "His thoughtful, rigorous research and evaluation have improved all of PEF’s programs. Keith’s work on DegreeU is truly pathbreaking and makes him a national leader in the effort to help students identify good pathways after graduating from high school.”
Dr. White is an alumnus of TN SCORE’s Complete Tennessee Leadership Institute, serves as the lead evaluator of University of Tennessee's GEARUP Grant, and is a member of the College and Career Readiness Evaluation Consortium. Prior to joining PEF, he served as a researcher and psychometrician for the state of Kentucky’s Legislative Research Commission. Before that, he led all research at the College Crusade of Rhode Island and served as lead evaluator for Rhode Island’s federal GEARUP grant. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Southern Illinois University.
“I’m honored by this promotion and look forward to continue working toward equitable and effective education opportunities for public school students and the education professionals who serve them,” said Dr. White.