My name is Katie and I am a rising senior. I plan to graduate in December 2019 with majors in Economics and Social Policy & Practice and minors in Political Science and Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship. After three years at Tulane, I am finally spending a summer in New Orleans.
I am eager to have the opportunity to work with not one but two local non-profits. I am interning with the Education Research Alliance (ERA), which is funded by Tulane’s Murphy Institute for applied political and economic research. ERA is dedicated to understanding post-Katrina reform in New Orleans, though it is expanding its scope of work to include school-choice policies across the nation.
Their research looks at the impacts of school-choice in student outcomes, specifically across different socioeconomic, ethnic, and cultural lines. Through this internship, I am eager to learn more about the role of school choice in educational outcomes for disadvantaged students.
There, I am working on a collaborative initiative called REACH Center, or the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice. This research specifically investigates the impact of these policies on low-income, underrepresented minority, special education, and English Language Learner (ELL) students. I am contributing by developing the National Longitudinal School Choice Database (NLSCD). The goal of REACH is to provide leadership and outreach to policymakers and researchers on the issue of school choice.
I will also be working with the Development team of Liberty’s Kitchen as a Grant Research Intern. Liberty’s Kitchen is a local non-profit that provides unemployed and out-of-school youth with professional development, skills training, and social support services to achieve their visions of success. Their work also addresses the prevalence of food deserts and poverty throughout the city.
At Liberty’s Kitchen, I will monitor and evaluate programs, research best practices to strengthen the organization’s knowledge base, and identify partnership prospects and potential new donors to enhance funding opportunities. As I identify and work with potential donors and community partners, I will develop my ability to communicate the mission, strengths, and needs of Liberty and why they align well with those of the partner.
This is a translatable skill that would serve me in future employment in both the nonprofit and private sectors, particularly as it relates to identifying and persuading stakeholders, funders, or investors in a project.
I am interested in working with socially-driven organizations throughout my career. However, I am still trying to determine how I want to approach this very broad field. By working with two organizations in very different capacities, my primary goal for all of these positions is to better understand how data, research, and communication can drive social impact and equity.
Both positions require strong research skills but with different results; ERA requires concise synthesis in a database format, while Liberty’s Kitchen requires communication and technical writing for a variety of audiences. Therefore, one of my goals is to strengthen my ability to research with a specific purpose in mind. With ERA, I would also like to develop my writing skills and ability to understand legal documents, such as state statutes.
With Liberty’s Kitchen, I hope to better understand the business, financial, and development of non-profits, which can be a translatable skill in any sector. I also hope to hone my professional writing skills, particularly in concise and technical capacities.
In both positions, I hope to develop my confidence in collaborating with more experienced professionals and become more comfortable in sharing my ideas in a work setting. I would like to have weekly informational interviews with staff from each organization as well as their community partners. Specifically, ERA shares office space with multiple organizations that work to address education equity in New Orleans but do so with very different approaches.
Through building my network and discussing different career options, I would like to develop a stronger sense of the type of work that I am interested in. By the end of the summer, I want to think critically about my career interests and measure them against my proven strengths to reframe my next step professionally. Through self-reflection, I would like to have a better idea of my capabilities as I search for post-graduate employment.
NCI’s mission is to empower and cultivate leadership among undergraduate women. In both of these positions, I will be a member of teams comprised predominantly of women who are at various stages in their careers. I am eager to learn from their career paths and experiences as I begin to discover where my professional life will take me.
Both of these positions also require a self-starting attitude. I will have the opportunity to take initiative and take ownership of my projects. This is empowering as I have the opportunity to see myself in a professional setting. I believe that a key component of being a leader is having a strong vision for what the future should look like. For me, I want to see a more equitable society along lines of race, ability, and socioeconomic status.
Through each of these positions, I will develop a clearer sense of the needs of my community and solutions that have been implemented to address them.