Brookings Mountain West, a collaboration between UNLV and the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank, has announced its roster of visiting scholars for the fall 2025 semester. These experts will focus on a variety of public policy topics, including the important and timely issues of college access, higher education finance, climate policy, transportation and water infrastructure, workforce and economic development, and teacher diversity and quality.
Each academic year, visiting scholars from Brookings engage with UNLV students and faculty in classroom and research settings, as well as with community leaders and decisionmakers to offer their policy expertise. Select scholars will also offer free lectures that will be open to the public.
Members of the UNLV community are invited to request classroom presentations, one-on-one meetings, workshops, or department-specific gatherings with any of our visiting scholars by filling out this online form.
Visiting Scholars Lectures
Date: Tuesday, Sept. 30
- Sarah Reber, Brookings Senior Fellow in Economic Studies and Cabot Family Chair, will present “Improving Schools to Promote Upward Mobility: The Promise and Limits of School Finance Reforms." The lecture will examine funding and other reforms that offer the best policy interventions to improve schools.
Date: Wednesday, Oct. 15
- Joseph Kane, a fellow at Brookings Metro, will present “U.S. Water Infrastructure: Diving Into Needs & Recent Policy Developments." The lecture will explore challenges to regional and national water infrastructure and ways that policymakers are launching water infrastructure plans to meet future needs.
Sept. 29 - Oct. 2: Sarah Reber
Sarah Reber is a Brookings senior fellow in economic studies and Cabot Family Chair. Her research focuses on college access and success, elementary and secondary education finance policy, and school desegregation. Previously, Reber was associate professor of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs; a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; a California Policy Lab affiliated expert; a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at UC Berkeley; and a research assistant and staff economist on the Council of Economic Advisers.
Oct. 13-16: Joseph Kane
Joseph Kane is a fellow at Brookings Metro. His work covers a wide array of policy topics focused on the built environment, infrastructure, and economic development, with an eye toward building greater economic opportunity and climate resilience at the regional level. Kane has particular expertise defining, measuring, and addressing challenges and opportunities facing the country’s infrastructure workforce, including water workers, energy workers, and green workers more broadly. Kane teaches graduate-level courses in infrastructure policy and planning at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy. Prior to Brookings, Kane was an economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Nov. 3-6: Michael Hansen
Michael Hansen is a Brookings senior fellow in governance studies at the Brown Center on Education Policy. A labor economist by training, he has conducted original research on a wide array of education policy issues, with a specialization in teacher policy and school accountability. Other areas of focus for Hansen have included teacher diversity, teacher quality, student access to quality teaching, and STEM learning. He also serves as co-editor of the Brown Center Chalkboard, the Brookings Institution’s blog on domestic education policy and research.
