CAP-Ed calls upon the talented researchers and practitioners in the School of Education to participate in many aspects of CAP-Ed’s work but CAP-Ed’s core staff carries out the primary development and implementation of the Center’s programming.

CAP-Ed Team:
Tom Timar, PhD Director
Julie Maxwell-Jolly, PhD Managing Director
Davis Campbell Senior Fellow
Virginia (Ginger) Adams Simon, Ed.D. Research Analyst

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Tom Timar, PhD
Professor, School of Education
Director, CAP-Ed

Thomas Timar is Professor of Education in the UC Davis School of Education. His areas of expertise include education finance, policy, and governance. In addition to his faculty responsibilities, he is also director of the UC Davis Center for Applied Policy in Education (CAP-Ed) and a member of the steering committee for Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE). In the current year, he is also Director of Research for the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence. In addition to his education experience and background in federal and state education policy, he has an extensive background in international education policy development. These include education policy projects with the Harvard Agency for International Development, the United States Agency for International Development, the Open Society Institute (the Soros Network), the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Program. He is a contributing researcher for Getting Down to Facts.

Julie Maxwell-Jolly, PhD
Senior Researcher
Managing Director, CAP-Ed

Julie Maxwell-Jolly is the managing Director of CAP-Ed. She began her career in education teaching English learner and immigrant students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She has a variety of additional education experience including as a Lecturer at UC Davis, supervisor of student teachers at CSU Sacramento, community college liaison for migrant education, and working with legal organizations to design and conduct workshops for parents of EL and immigrant students. She has designed, coordinated, participated in, and written on research in several areas related to high quality and equitable education for culturally and linguistically diverse students including: secondary schooling for these students, preparing teachers for diversity, the effects of education language policy in California, and Latino persistence in community college. She has also served as the coordinator of the Linguistic Minority Research Institute Education Policy Center at UC Davis for several years. She holds a PhD in education from UC Davis with a focus on education policy affecting culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Davis Campbell
Senior Fellow
CAP-ed

Davis Campbell, who retired as Executive Director of the California School Boards Association in 2001, has a distinguished career in public education. Prior to his retirement from CSBA (1988-2001), Campbell served as Executive Director of the California Institute for School Improvement and managing partner of SRA Associates. (1983-88). From 1977 to 1983 he served as Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of California. He currently serves as President of the Governance Institute for the California School Boards Association; he is a Senior Fellow at the UCD School of Education, and maintains an active consulting practice in effective governance at both the state and international level. Campbell is also an elected Trustee of the Yolo County Board of Education. He serves on a number of state level boards in public education including EdSource (President, 2007-2009), the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning (founding Chairman), the California Institute for School Improvement, and the California Cities, Counties, Schools Partnership (founding board member). In Yolo County he also serves as a Commissioner for the Yolo County Aging and Adult Services Commission and is a member of the Board of Advisors for the UCD School of Education. He and his wife have lived in Davis, California since 1965.

Virginia (Ginger) Adams Simon, Ed.D.
Lecturer, Policy Analyst

Ginger is a lecturer and policy analyst at the University of California, Davis School of Education. She works in the Center for Applied Policy in Education (CAP-Ed) helping with program development, implementation and a variety of research projects. Ginger also serves as Senior Associate for Cross & Joftus, LLC, an education policy consulting firm. In this role she is currently acting as project manager for the Brokers of Expertise project at the California Department of Education.

Prior to moving to California in 2005, Ginger spent 5 years at the University of Pennsylvania as the Associate Director of the Center for Greater Philadelphia, an applied public policy center. Her areas of specialization include accountability policy, governance reform, teacher quality, compensation, organizational leadership and value-added assessment. Her work as a school practitioner includes over 20 years as an organizational leader in independent schools as well as work with public school stakeholders conducting district-embedded research and training on value-added assessment and accountability program development.