Daniel Nagin on the Enduring Influence of the Tepper School and CMU’s Interdisciplinary Culture

Daniel Nagin (BS ’71, MSIA ’71) has built a lasting connection to Carnegie Mellon University, where he completed all of his education and spent much of his teaching and research career. Nagin earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Carnegie Mellon and served in several public policy roles before returning to the university as a faculty member in 1986.

Today, Nagin is the Lester Hamburg University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics at CMU’s Heinz College, a globally recognized expert in criminology, and a recently elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, counted among the highest scholarly recognitions. Reflecting on his career, he credits much of his trajectory to the mentorship and interdisciplinary environment he first encountered at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, now the Tepper School of Business.

“Working as a research assistant for Leonard Rapping, who himself worked closely with Bob Lucas, I was influenced by some very key figures in GSIA’s intellectual life early on,” said Nagin. “Being around that research environment profoundly shaped me and helped me to become the researcher that I am.”

Rapping, an American economist, was known for advising several federal agencies and for his influential collaboration with Robert E. Lucas, a future Nobel laureate and fellow faculty member at GSIA.

As a research assistant, Nagin was also welcomed into faculty gatherings where he met other notable figures, such as future Nobel Laureate Herb Simon, and Robert Kaplan, who would later become dean of Harvard Business School. These early experiences helped Nagin develop a passion for research that bridges disciplines.

While working on labor economics projects with Rapping, he contributed to a study on racial discrimination in professional baseball. It was an unusual topic at the time, and one that offered powerful insights.

The experience reminded him that the best ideas can come from anywhere, especially when one of Rapping’s Ph.D. students challenged his interpretation. Seeing that Rapping took the critique seriously reinforced Nagin’s belief in the value of open, critical dialogue. He notes that a collaborative intellectual environment is a key element of Carnegie Mellon’s culture.

“CMU is far and away the most welcoming university I’ve encountered when it comes to interdisciplinary research,” he said. “It's a very important dimension of the university.”

That ethos has been vital to Nagin’s own academic identity. His research spans disciplines, making his election to the National Academy of Sciences even more meaningful.

“The National Academy of Sciences is structured in a very disciplinary way, and there are different sections that are defined very much along disciplinary lines,” he explained. “I don't neatly fit into any of those disciplines, so to be recognized is especially gratifying.”

For current and prospective students, Nagin offers some important advice: Follow your intellectual heart, not a prescribed path.

“You want to be in an environment that will be supportive of your intellectual endeavors,” he said. “Nobody at CMU has ever questioned why I work on various kinds of problems that might not have a direct connection to public policy. In fact, I've been consistently rewarded for it.”