Jennie W. Wenger

Jennie W. Wenger (she/her) is director of the Economics, Sociology, and Statistics Department  and a senior economist at the RAND Corporation, where she studies education and training, military compensation, and recruiting. Over the last 15 years, she has been the principal investigator of a series of studies examining the effectiveness of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program, a DoD-sponsored program for high school dropouts. Wenger has led and contributed to other recent projects examining options for retaining the Army's cyber expertise, the ways in which the Post-9/11 GI Bill influences military recruiting and retention, the implications of integrating women into combat arms occupations, changes in diversity in the military over time, balancing quality of life with mission tempo on Coast Guard cutters, and factors that influence the decision to transition to the Reserve Components. Before joining RAND, she was a senior research scientist and project manager at CNA, where she authored a series of reports examining the relationship between body fat and performance in the enlisted military and served as the co-PI on a study documenting many aspects of military dependents' educational experiences. Wenger received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.