Cecilia Rouse

Formal education

Rouse received her A.B. in economics from Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude in 1986 and staying to obtain a Ph.D. in economics in 1992. She became a professor of economics at Princeton University the same year she graduated.

Personal life

Cecilia grew up in Del Mar, California She has two siblings - Forest Rouse, a physicist, and Carolyn Rouse, an anthropologist and professor at Princeton University. Her father is a research physicist who received his PhD from Caltech in 1956. Her mother worked as a school psychologist.

Rouse attributes the development of her educational career to traveling and exploring as a young child and the "importance my parents placed on learning." Her brother and sister hold Ph.Ds in physics and visual anthropology, respectively.

She has two daughters, Nidal Morrison, and Safa Morrison. Her husband is Ford Morrison, son of author Toni Morrison.

Career

Rouse is the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Lawrence and Shirley Katzman and Lewis and Anna Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education. She is the founding director of the Princeton University Education Research Section, is a member of the National Academy of Education and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her primary research interests are in labor economics with a focus on the economics of education. Rouse has served as an editor of the Journal of Labor Economics and as a senior editor of The Future of Children. She is a member of the board of directors of MDRC, and a director of the T. Rowe Price Equity Mutual Funds and an Advisory Board Member of the T. Rowe Price Fixed Income Mutual Funds.

Rouse served as a member of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2011. Prior to serving in the Obama Administration, Rouse served in the National Economic Council under President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 1999.