Bloustein School Professor Radha Jagannathan was recently named the recipient of the Rutgers Chancellor Award for Global Impact.
The award honors a faculty member whose research, teaching, or service has catalyzed global partnerships or generated global impacts and exceptional public engagement.
Rutgers’ 2024-25 Chancellor and Provost Awards for Faculty Excellence recognize outstanding contributions through innovative teaching, cross-disciplinary research, public engagement, impact, and service. The individuals receiving these awards were nominated by their colleagues for their outstanding contributions.
Mark Robson, Distinguished Professor and Dean of the School of Graduate Studies was pleased to nominate Dr. Jagannathan, a long-time collaborator and colleague. “Dr. Jagannathan’s global work is significant, and she is the definition of Rutgers’ Jersey Roots, Global Reach motto,” he said.
In her recent accomplishments, Dr. Jagannathan was named director of the PASCAL Center for the Americas at Rutgers University, having been instrumental in its establishment at Rutgers. Its focus is STEM learning from early childhood through college and beyond, offering policy guidance to enhance the probability of educational and labor market success for youth.
As director of PASCAL Rutgers, she is working to introduce a new generation of Bloustein School students interested in international development to different perspectives provided by PASCAL associates across the world, with proposals to study public education in Italy, Spain, the US, Finland, and Estonia.
“Her efforts have revolved around establishing collaborations on just about every continent,” Dean Robson continued. “One such example of her shaping of young minds and contributing to policy discussions using what has been done in New Brunswick locally or more generally in the U.S. includes serving as the principal architect for a European Commission-funded (€5M) study of youth unemployment in 11 European countries. This project has resulted in at least 40 published, peer-reviewed articles after the dataset was made publicly available, contributing to knowledge in a number of critical areas involving young people.”
A fellow nominator noted that “[Dr. Jagannathan’s] work on the Cultural Pathways to Economic Self-Sufficiency and Entrepreneurship Europe project (CUPESSE) demonstrates not only a deep understanding of her field but also a capacity to integrate diverse and international perspectives, offering novel solutions to complex and global challenges.”
In 2021 she authored “The Growing Challenge of Youth Unemployment in Europe and America: A Cross-Cultural Perspective,” which examined the high rates of youth unemployment in Southern Europe and if the American entrepreneurship model or the German apprenticeship model could be used to bring down these high rates (published by Bristol University Press).
She also co-authored, with Michael Camasso, “Caught in the Cultural Preference Net: Three Generations of Employment Choices in Six Capitalist Democracies.” The book, published by Oxford University Press, examines work-related beliefs, attitudes, and preferences that characterize the value orientations of three generational families in Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy, India, and the United States. They investigate whether cultural and economic contexts have resulted in enduring attitude and preference structures or if these values and preferences have been changing as economic conditions in a nation have changed.
Following the successful implementation of her New Brunswick-based Nurture thru Nature (NtN) program, which introduced elementary school students to the wonders of nature and natural science, Dr. Jagannathan created a related, short-term program in Italy and Spain that has contributed to youth learning in science and mathematics in these countries.
She has engaged in a number of research projects in India as well, collaborating with SRM Institute of Science and Technology on youth employment as well as on women’s health. Dr. Jagannathan received Fulbright Scholarships to Germany (2010), Hungary (2014), and Finland (2023) to conduct seminars on policy analysis and the use of econometrics at the University of Konstanz, Germany and the Central European University, Hungary, and to conduct comparative research on public education at Tampere University in Finland.
At the Bloustein School, her teaching interests include courses in statistics, econometrics and research methods and other substantive courses in the areas of demography, community and international development, and poverty.