Achievement

STUDENT-ORGANIZED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS. IGERT students (and alums) organized several excellent programs this year: (1) “Innovative approaches for using Publicly Available Data in Social Policy Research”, a day-long conference designed for graduate students and postdocs across the Harvard community to share their experiences working with unique datasets in the public domain. Several faculty also discussed new directions for research using these data. (2) Alums, in town for the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) meetings, organized a career panel comprised of 4 recent Ph.D.’s (3 former IGERT) working in social policy research at Abt Associates, Brookings, Mathematica Policy Research, and RAND. (3) Conversation with IGERT faculty members Kathryn Edin and Jeffrey Liebman on policy applications of research. Liebman recently returned to Harvard after serving for two years in the Obama Administration, most recently as Acting Deputy Director at OMB.