Two Robins School of Business professors receive $592,081 three-year grant to assess state and federal employment programs for the disabled

The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a $592,081 three-year grant to David Dean and Robert Schmidt, economics professors at the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business. 

Their project will assess the financial efficiency of federal and state employment programs for individuals with disabilities and develop solutions to assist government agencies in providing them better employment support.

Joseph Ashley, assistant commissioner for grants and federal programs at the Virginia Department of Rehabilitation Services, is a co-director of the project, titled, “Enhancing Outcome-Based Performance Measures for the Public Vocational Rehabilitation Program: Developing Returns on Investment Models.”

They will assess the return on investment (ROI) of recent evaluations of vocational rehabilitation programs and also apply other economic indicators of effectiveness. After creating a ROI model, they will test it, help apply it and manage agreements between agencies. 

“These grants are extremely difficult to secure, and this award speaks well of the quality of the work of these two members of our economics department,” said Nancy Bagranoff, dean of the Robins School. The grant will fund about 89.5 percent of the project, and the university will provide an additional $69,717 of in-kind support.