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At the Policy
Research Shop (PRS), a program developed by Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center, undergraduate
students conduct objective research and offer their findings to the New
Hampshire and Vermont state legislatures and local governments. Now in its
third year, the PRS has received a $300,000/three-year funding commitment from
the Ford Foundation.
The Ford Foundation grant will enable the program to expand and improve its
operations, adding a postdoctoral fellow and a graduate research fellow to the
staff and developing more public policy curricular offerings. In addition, the
grant will fund efforts to replicate the program at other institutions,
explains Ronald
Shaiko, associate director of curricular and research programs at the
Rockefeller Center and research associate professor of government. "The
Ford Foundation is very excited about what we are doing here—the notion that we
are engaging students at the undergraduate level and serving the greater
good—and they would like to see us create a model that might be of interest to
other colleges and universities," he says.
Shaiko plans to present the PRS model to political scientists from states
with part-time legislatures that have limited staff at the American Political Science
Association Teaching and Learning Conference in February 2008. "There
are 17 states with part-time legislatures like New Hampshire and Vermont, in
which the legislators are not highly paid and staff and resources are
limited," says Shaiko. "Colleges in those states could replicate the
model developed by the Rockefeller Center, on the curricular and practical
application side."
The PRS is staffed by undergraduate student researchers who have completed
the Rockefeller Center's Introduction to Public Policy Research seminar,
offered in fall term each year. During the seminar, state legislators and staff
participate in class discussions about the policy issues to be pursued by the
student research groups. Students may then continue in the PRS for one term of
academic credit or in paid research assistantships. Through the PRS, students
conduct their own research as well as collect and analyze existing research on
topics requested by lawmakers in both the New Hampshire and Vermont
legislatures. They prepare reports and may even testify before legislative
committees, where they present their findings, answer questions, and make
recommendations based on policy goals.
In past years, students in the PRS have researched and testified on issues
ranging from the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act to an analysis of the
options available in offering a voluntary retirement savings plan to the
citizens of New Hampshire.
By GENEVIEVE HAAS
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