Effective this fall, Morgan Edwards will officially be a tenured member of the La Follette faculty. This comes after the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents unanimously voted to recommend her for tenure in December 2025. Her new title is associate professor.

Edwards’ cutting-edge research focuses on energy responses to the climate crisis and the role of public policy in ensuring equitable and inclusive energy transitions. Edwards is also a highly regarded teacher and dedicated mentor to junior scholars.

Through the Climate Action Lab that she founded in 2020, she has helped graduate students and postdocs advance their research and publish papers in some of the world’s leading academic journals.

“Morgan is an exceptional scholar who excels in research, teaching, mentorship and outreach – all the elements of a quality faculty member we look for at La Follette,” La Follette Director Susan Yackee said. “Her research is phenomenal, but just as importantly, she is an incredibly generous scholar who is always looking to help the next generation of environmental policy scholars learn hard-hitting analysis skills and refine their research interests. Morgan’s future is bright and we are excited to see what she goes on to do here at La Follette.”

Edwards has also been a key contributor to the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal initiative. The international collaboration between leading scholars produces ongoing reports that serve as the most comprehensive assessment of carbon dioxide removal development across the globe. She served as lead author for the third edition of the report released earlier this year.

 “La Follette has been the ideal place to grow as a scholar,” Edwards said. “The school gives junior faculty the freedom to pursue ambitious research while surrounding us with colleagues and students who make the work better. I’m excited to keep doing this work at La Follette.”

Edwards joined the La Follette School in 2020. She received her Ph.D. in Engineering Systems from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), her S.M. in Technology and Policy from MIT, and her B.S. in Environmental Science and Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before coming to Madison, she was a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland.

Also effective this fall, La Follette faculty member Yang Wang has been promoted to professor after her exceptional work as an associate professor for La Follette.

A 2003 alumna of La Follette, Wang joined her alma mater’s faculty in fall 2016 after seven years in the Department of Economics at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania.

“Yang is incredibly deserving of this promotion. She has been an impactful teacher for hundreds of La Follette students in her decade with the school, all while producing world-class research and advancing the fields of social and health policy analysis,” Yackee said. “As an alum of La Follette, she showcases the diversity of career pathways available to our students and serves as an exceptional model for how La Follette alumni can thrive by being deeply committed to policy analysis but also incredibly kind and a joy to work with.”

Wang’s primary research interests are in applied microeconomics, health economics, and applied econometrics. She received her doctorate degree in economics from Duke University after earning her MIPA from La Follette.