Matthew Lee, a Distinguished Doctoral Fellow and senior research assistant in the University of Arkansas' Department of Education Reform, has been awarded a Humane Studies Fellowship for the 2020-21 academic year by the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University.

"Matt Lee is a remarkably accomplished doctoral student with a promising career ahead of him," said Jay Greene, head of the Education Reform department in the College of Education and Health Professions. "Receiving this fellowship from IHS shortly after Matt was part of the team awarded a Chancellor's Grant is further confirmation that others see in Matt the great potential that we have also seen."

Greene, Lee, Jennifer Hoyer and Molly Beck proposed a project on Holocaust education and it was among only nine inaugural initiatives awarded the Chancellor's Grant.

In March, Lee will travel to Fort Worth for the annual conference of the Association for Education Finance and Policy to present his ongoing work with Beck on the effects of Holocaust education on students' civic values.

In addition to studying civic value formation, Lee will use the Humane Studies Fellowship award to study school choice policies, which allow students to attend schools other than their district-assigned school.

One current research project that Lee is undertaking with Patrick Wolf and Jonathan Mills of the U of A, is the evaluation of how school characteristics mediated student outcomes in the Louisiana Scholarship Program, a statewide voucher program.

Lee recently presented their findings at the International School Choice and Reform Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

"I'm grateful to the Institute for Humane Studies for supporting me in this work, and to my incredible professors in the Department of Education Reform for all their guidance along the way," he said.

Lee earned a B.A. in political science from Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, and is in progress to complete a Ph.D. in education policy from the U of A.

The Institute for Humane Studies promotes the teaching and research of classical liberal ideas and advances higher education's core purpose of intellectual discovery and human progress. It is affiliated with George Mason University.