As the Senior Director of Data and Research for JPEF, Shannon Varga seeks to lead mixed methodological approaches to counteracting the systemic conditions that restrict opportunities for underserved students and lead to disparities in student outcomes across the county. She aims to leverage JPEF’s historical partnerships with the community to implement and evaluate data-driven initiatives that cross sectors, improve collaboration of existing community assets, and make a measurable impact on school quality and education broadly in Duval County.
Before joining JPEF, Shannon was a Research Assistant Professor at Boston University and the Associate Director of Research and Evaluation for the Community Engaged Research and Evaluation Sciences (CERES) Institute for Children and Youth, housed in the Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. Shannon has spent 10+ years conducting research in the education and youth development space, specifically understanding the complex relation between social capital, relationships, and student outcomes. She was also previously a Postdoctoral Research fellow at America’s Promise Alliance where she led research on school and workforce engagement for underserved populations (e.g., emergent multilingual students, justice-involved youth, youth who have interrupted education) and has over 5 years of experience translating this research to national, mixed-stakeholder, audiences.
Shannon earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology: Applied Developmental Science at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and her BA in psychology from Montclair State University. After living in several states on the east coast, Shannon is excited to invest in her new home state of Florida and maximize the impact of the existing community efforts and energy for serving students in Duval County.