PhD, 2018 Rachel Burns is a senior policy analyst at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO). She leads a multi-year research initiative to quantify the impacts of college closures in partnership with the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. She also supports other organizational priorities in policy evaluation and research. Her current interests in the field of higher education include the implications of federal and state policies with regards to undocumented and under-documented immigrant students in colleges and universities, as well as the organization and management of minority-serving institutions. She also has done research on the changing faculty workforce, international education, and graduate student debt and has presented on these and other topics at national conferences. Previously, she served as a Research Education Analyst at RTI International. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and French language from the University of Virginia, and her Master of Public Administration from the University of Georgia. As a graduate student, Rachel taught Introduction to Political Science and served as a graduate assistant for the UGA’s Office of Economic Development. Following graduation, Burns worked as a grants specialist for the Department of Genetics, and later in the Office for Sponsored Programs within the Office of the Vice President for Research. She also served as a research assistant with UGA’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute as well as with IHE faculty members James Hearn and Karen Webber on a variety of grant-funded and independent study projects. Burns was the 2016-17 recipient of the Zell and Shirley Miller Fellowship, which is awarded annually to a “doctoral student of high promise.”
