UF President Ben Sasse announced Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach as senior adviser to the president for academic excellence and associate provost in a press release Tuesday.
Schanzenbach is the current director of the Institute for Policy Research and the Margaret Walker Alexander Professor of human development and social policy, both at Northwestern University.
"Her commitment to academic rigor and her passion for higher education are contagious,” Sasse wrote in the release.
Schanzenbach has previous experience in academia and policy-making.
She worked as an associate professor at the University of Chicago after she graduated with a doctoral degree in economics from Princeton University in 2002.
She is a leading expert in economic analysis of anti-poverty programs and education with a focus in public and private health insurance, according to the press release.
From 2015 to 2017, Schanzenbach worked as the director of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative within the Brookings Institution, where she remains as a nonresident senior fellow.
She began her term as director of the Institute for Policy Research in 2017.
As director, Schanzenbach facilitated trans-disciplinary research and significantly increased the amounts of grants and proposals awarded to the institute, according to the press release.
Schanzenbach testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate on nutrition and food insecurity.
Her research was cited in a 2016 report by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee. Sasse served on the committee at the time of the report.
"I am deeply honored to join the University of Florida in this capacity," Schanzenbach said in the release. "I look forward to working in partnership with President Sasse, the Provost’s office, and the entire Gator Nation to continue to grow the university’s excellence in its missions of teaching, research, and service."
Schanzenbach is expected to begin working Aug. 8, according to the press release.
Contact Garrett at gshanley@alligator.org. Follow him on Twitter @garrettshanley.
Garrett Shanley is a fourth-year journalism major and the Summer 2024 university editor for The Alligator. Outside of the newsroom, you can find him watching Wong Kar-Wai movies and talking to his house plants.
