During my first semester of grad school, I was a Kindergarten Readiness Pre-K Curriculum Study Intern with Philadelphia based non-profit organization Research for Action. I was so excited for this internship because it was a fantastic opportunity to continue to build off of my Stata and R skills that I learned in undergrad.
The Kindergarten Readiness Pre-K Curriculum Study is implementing a Pre-K curriculum in Florida schools and collecting data from participants to test the impact of the program. When I began my internship with RFA, I had the opportunity to assist with this project from early beginnings. I helped edit consent forms, send out communications with the schools, put together/mail the packages. Soon after, I was able to utilize Microsoft Excel, R, and Stata to look at incoming data from the schools. With the help of the team, I definitely got to hone in on my coding skills and learned so much! I also really enjoyed that I had the opportunity to go in person a few times, which is rare during these times. It was very cool to go into a big fancy office building in the middle of Center City.
Going into grad school, I had a general interest in social policy because due to my sociology background, I look at all aspects of society. However, through my coursework at Fels and this internship, I have determined that in the future my main focus areas will likely be education and housing. I think that education is definitely one of the most important aspects of American socio-political life because it can determine a persons life course. It would be amazing if I can work for an education-related organization once I graduate. I believe that my social science research skills can be used to do program evaluations or research studies that can help inform education policies.
One education policy that I am particularly passionate about is Universal Pre-K. As I mentioned, I believe that education is one of the most important parts of American life, so ensuring that all American children have equal access to affordable and high quality early education is crucial to having a thriving society. In my law class last semester, I wrote a paper on Universal Pre-K and how it is the solution to American adulthood illiteracy, which you can view here. Additionally, I wrote a policy brief for my Econ course last semester about the same topic, except this time taking a more economic approach. You can view that policy brief here.