Tuan D. Nguyen, Ph.D.

Tuan D. Nguyen, Ph.D., is a Mizzou Forward Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Missouri. He serves as Principal Investigator of the Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Effectiveness Center. His research focuses on education policy, the economics of education, teacher labor markets, rural education as well as STEM and special education, with particular expertise in causal inference and meta-analysis. Tuan has secured over $8.6 million in extramural funding as PI or co-PI, including an NSF CAREER Award examining the supply, qualifications, and career paths of STEM teachers. He has published widely in leading journals such as the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Researcher, Review of Educational Research, AERA Open, and Economics of Education Review, including highly cited work on teacher shortages, turnover, and the rural teacher workforce. His scholarship has shaped national policy conversations, with contributions to the Economic Report of the President, testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and frequent media coverage in outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and Education Week. He also maintains widely used public resources, including www.teachershortages.com and the Community Assets and Relative Rurality (CARR) index, www.ruralityindex.com.