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Tag: education

Holly Kosiewicz

Holly Kosiewicz is Director of Policy Development at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Jordan and El Salvador and has worked on research teams in Colombia, Peru, and the United States. Her work has been included and published in several book projects as well as The Journal of Higher Education, The Journal of Economic Psychology, and Education Week. Holly earned her Master’s at Brandeis University (2007) and completed her PhD at the University of Southern California (2015).  

HARRIS: What were your immediate plans after finishing undergrad and did they work out the way you imagined they would?

HOLLY: I graduated from UT Austin in 2002, and my intent was to do international development work. I’m a first-generation American, and my Polish parents instilled in me the importance of understanding different cultures. So, after UT, I joined the Peace Corps and worked in Jordan. Unfortunately, we were evacuated after six months of service. That sent me back to the States for about half a year. After that I returned to the Peace Corps in El Salvador but I realized it wasn’t really a good fit; nevertheless I still wanted to do something related to international development work. So, afterwards, I decided to get a Master’s in International Development from Brandeis University. As a student there, I became a research assistant on a project that was examining the well-being of a Bolivian indigenous group: the Tsimane’. That experience is what sparked my interest in doing research.

After I graduated with my Master’s degree, I got a job working as a research assistant at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. There, I worked on a number of projects, but the project that most interested me was one that investigated the impacts of a financial aid program intended to help lower-income students attend and succeed in college. What I liked about that project was that I was able to work with economists and psychologists who were studying the behavioral dimensions of student aid. I worked at Los Andes for a year before returning to the States to start paying off my student loans. When I returned, I began my work in DC as a researcher for an education newspaper called Education Week. If you’re interested in education, or K-12, I would recommend looking into it and reading its articles.

After working there for two years, I enrolled in the education policy Ph.D. program at the University of Southern California. USC gave me the best opportunity to do my own research and gave me the best financial support. While there, I studied developmental education in community colleges. To give you some context, developmental education is largely used by community colleges to help underprepared students succeed at the college level. Some people call it “remedial coursework.” And there’s been a lot of debate about the effectiveness of developmental education. I did a wide range of research—I do mixed methods research, which means it involves both quantitative and qualitative approaches—trying to test the effectiveness of different assessment instruments to determine which ones can adequately assess if a student is prepared for college or not.

In my last year of school, I was laboring on whether I should go to academia or whether I should enter the government. It was a hard decision. Deep down, I really wanted to conduct research that could make a meaningful impact on the education that students receive, and I wanted to work directly with state and local policy makers.

So instead of taking a job in academia, I decided to take a job as Director of Policy Development at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Because the work I’m doing has a clear impact on state higher education policy, I think it is the right place to be, at least for now. But only time will tell if I transition to a research organization or try being an academic later.

HARRIS: You’re back in Texas, right? Did a longing to be home bring you back?

HOLLY: Yeah, for sure. I wanted to be closer to my parents, especially as they get older. My husband and I have a family here and want to make sure our kids have a close relationship with our relatives.

HARRIS: Can you describe for me what you do during a typical day at work?

HOLLY: Well, my work really ebbs and flows. I don’t really have a typical day, but I can tell you what I do. My official title is Director of Policy Development at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and I work in a relatively new division at the agency called Innovation and Policy Development. And the short of it is: we’re considered a think tank within the state agency, that supports and conducts research that has the potential to inform higher education policy and practice in the state. For the past year, I have been developing relationships with external researchers—these might be researchers in academic institutions, like Dickinson, or in think tanks—to work on studies that answer the big questions that state policy makers have around higher education.

For example, one of the things I’m currently working on is dual-credit education. Dual-credit education is a process by which a high school student can simultaneously earn high school and college credit from a single course. In Texas, participation in dual-credit education has been expanding rapidly for the last 15 years. But recently, due to new legislation, it’s also seen a significant increase in the percent of 14- and 15-year-olds participating in it. As a result of these shifts, state and local policymakers are raising questions about whether dual-credit education is being effectively scaled. Are students academically prepared to succeed in dual-credit courses, which are college-level courses? Are the academic standards used to teach dual-credit courses the same as those used to teach regular college courses? What are the costs of delivering dual-credit education? And very broadly, how are high school students benefitting from dual-credit education? These are some questions that the Coordinating Board, in collaboration with the RAND Corporation, is trying to answer, and we hope that these answers can help state legislators and policymakers decide what kinds of reform should take place.

HARRIS: What do you think are some of the biggest challenges to developing and implementing policies in higher education?

HOLLY: I think one big challenge is how to go about improving education policy and practice when working with very limited resources. In other words, where can you introduce reforms that generate the largest gains for the least amount of money? That question is always at the forefront of policymaking at all levels of government.

Another challenge is the political pressure that policymakers encounter continuously to get things done. Many times, the pressure to get things done quickly runs counter to the long time it takes research to inform what policy should look like. Research is typically very methodical and it’s slow to produce results. Policymakers, however, need to make decisions quickly, and so they are not going to wait for research that takes five years to complete. The challenge is thus designing research that can produce results relatively quickly while meaningfully informing the decisions that policymakers need to make.

Another challenge is that there are a lot of stakeholders involved, and each of them has its own interests and concerns. It’s sometimes difficult to understand what all of these interests and concerns are, not to mention determining how to balance them in such a way that everyone benefits. Not only students, for instance, but also teachers and faculty, advisors and administrators.

HARRIS: You’ve worked in different educational systems and in several capacities related to education: development projects, policy research abroad. How have these experiences informed the work you do now?

HOLLY: Well, I’ve always believed that education can make society more equal. And that belief has shaped the work that I have done since I’ve graduated from college. I’ve always wanted to ensure that my work could really improve education quality, particularly for the underserved. If I wasn’t doing that—if my work was helping maintain the status quo, for instance—that would make me feel very uncomfortable.

HARRIS: Some people might cast or imagine policy research as being a separate project from what could be called “on the ground” work, or work that interacts directly with the people affected by policy.

HOLLY: I don’t think policy research has to be detached at all from the people you are trying to affect. There are all different types of research. There is research that uses administrative records from state government agencies or federal government agencies. But there is also policy work or policy research where the researcher engages directly with students, with teachers, with community organizers to really get a better grasp of what is happening in the trenches and to give voice to those who have been silenced by more dominant groups. I think the experiences of people who deliver education or experience education is extremely valuable, especially when you’re trying to contextualize, for example, quantitative findings. And the only real way you can get at that is by actually talking to the people who are directly involved in overseeing and delivering education.

HARRIS: What advice do you have for someone trying to determine the best way to have an impact on the educational systems that surround them?

HOLLY: I took some time off after earning an undergraduate degree—I didn’t go straight into my PhD because I think it is really important to figure out where your passion lies. And I think one way of doing that is working in the trenches and really trying to figure out what are the challenges that students are facing and what are the challenges that teachers are facing. I think those experiences can really help you figure out what you are interested in and what you like to do. For example, I was a teacher in the Peace Corps and I discovered that I wasn’t particularly good at it. But that experience also helped me to better understand that there are so many external factors, like nutrition and outside demands, that can impact if a child learns and performs well. I saw that with my own eyes, and I don’t think I would have learned about that sitting behind a computer screen or reading a report, you know? Or at least, I wouldn’t have learned it so profoundly.

So I would recommend to anyone who is interested in making an impact on education policy to work side-by-side with educators, parents, students and educational organizations. Get to really know the challenges that they are facing before trying to make change. Once you get a good grasp of what those challenges are, the way you approach education policy research will be more thoughtful, and probably will gain more respect.

Interview with Patricia Thomas

Patricia Thomas is a Lead Educational Adviser for the Young Scholars Program at the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. Before joining Jack Kent Cooke, she taught college courses in education and trained K-12 teachers to serve students with a variety of needs, background, and interests. She has also worked as a foreign language instructor and assistant teacher in gifted and enrichment education at both public and private schools.

BROOKE: To start off, can you tell me a little bit about your educational background and what degrees you got in undergrad and how you got to where you are?

PATRICIA: Sure. I was a foreign language major as an undergraduate student. I’d had a passion for French and Spanish all through high school—and actually earlier than that for French. So I majored in French and Spanish and minored in Education and I got my teaching certificate at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Then I went to Teachers College, the graduate education school at Columbia University, and first I did a Master’s Degree in general Curriculum and Teaching and then I did a Masters of Education in Curriculum and Teaching but with a specialization in Urban and Multicultural Education. I taught for a while while I was there, and then I went to Emory University for my doctoral program, where I got a Ph.D. in Educational Studies with specializations in Second Language Acquisition and Urban and Multicultural Education.

Getting my Ph.D. was a really good experience. I learned a lot from it. And when I started here in my Educational Adviser role, I wanted to keep learning: specifically, about advising. So I did a graduate certificate program through Kansas State University in Academic Advising, then a graduate certificate program through George Washington University in Counseling. I did this program because I had been thinking about getting a graduate degree in counseling and I wanted to get a sense of whether I wanted to pursue it fully. George Washington has a certificate program in Counseling Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Persons, so I took a few classes there, got the certificate, really enjoyed it, and decided to stay and do a Master’s Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

 BROOKE: What sparked your interest in urban education?

PATRICIA: I think that it was a little bit the circumstances of where I was. I’ve always been interested in education, but while I was getting my teaching certification at Wake Forest, my teaching advisor and mentor put me in touch with some instructors and professors at Teachers College and it just so happened that one of the people that I networked with was the professor for a sort of education and cultural diversity course. Once I got to Teachers College, it became my favorite class. I really enjoyed the course topics and the types of projects we did, and I wound up TA-ing for that professor for several semesters. And in doing that, I saw that there were some interesting issues that I could explore within the combination of urban and multicultural education. I was also teaching in New York at the time. I taught in a private school and also did after school work and teaching assistant work at two public schools. The differences among the three schools was enormous. And that just kind of got my thoughts percolating.

BROOKE: How did you get from New York and those positions to where you are now?

PATRICIA: I think originally my thought was that I was enjoying teaching but I wanted to participate more in teaching teachers. So I thought that the main way to be able to do that was to get a doctorate in education. I had a couple of friends at Emory that I had worked with years before and Emory had a small doctoral program, so it seemed like it’d be a really welcoming, cozy community. I applied there and got a chance to do a lot of work with the prospective teachers that they had in their Master of Arts in Teaching program. I think that I would have continued along that path, but I got to a point that many doctoral students get to which is that your funding is over but you are not finished. So I had many ups and downs with advisors leaving, retiring, going on sabbatical, and it wound up taking me five years to finish instead of the four that I was on track for. So I needed to find work for that fifth year.

I looked around Atlanta for jobs and wasn’t really finding something that I thought would be a good fit, so I decided to look around up here in the DC area instead because I grew up here and my family is still here in Maryland and DC. I decided not to look for teaching positions right away because some of the other veteran doctoral students had said, “If you start teaching while you’re still trying to finish your dissertation—if you actually leave your program, leave your campus and start teaching somewhere else—you’re going to be too distracted. You’re gonna love the teaching and you’re not gonna want to work on your research and your writing.” So I wound up taking a look at some jobs outside of teaching.

I was just looking at the Chronicle of Higher Ed website—they have a jobs board—and I started getting interested in the idea of advising, which would still be connected to education but would be different from designing a curriculum for a whole semester and grading papers and that kind of thing. So just on an off chance, I looked in the nonprofit section of the job boards and there was this position to be an Educational Adviser for a nonprofit organization and as I was looking through it, I thought, “The characteristics that they’re looking for are things that are interesting and important to me and things that I think that I can do.” The population was one that interested me a lot because the Foundation works with students who have financial need—so are from low to moderate income backgrounds—but kids who are really, really bright. I had worked with kids in a gifted education program in New York and in gifted summer programs for several years during college and the early part of grad school so it felt like a really good fit.

BROOKE: So if you could describe your current position, what is your job title and what does your job involve?

PATRICIA: It’s a little bit of a lot of things. The position I have now is Lead Educational Adviser. I started off as a regular Educational Adviser and I had a caseload of students that I worked with. I still have a caseload now, just a smaller one, and I also supervise other Educational Advisers. But the nuts and bolts of the Adviser position are to work with these students from 8th grade through 12th grade and help them and their families navigate the educational system, and get access to rigorous, challenging, interesting educational opportunities. Things like getting into a high school that is going to offer all the advanced coursework that they would benefit from, getting connected to lessons in art and music and sometimes sports or dance, things like that.

We help challenge them to set high goals for themselves and become leaders in their schools and their communities and help them pursue experiences that will help them learn how to do that. We also get them connected to each other and we also fund them via a tailored scholarship budget for enrichment opportunities like summer programs; almost all of our advisees do a summer program each year. There may be other programs that they’re involved in during the course of the year like an internship or a conference related to some of their interests, so we kind of lead them through getting connected to all of those kinds of good opportunities and then also get them prepared for college. So talking to them about what their options are and what the landscape of college looks like, taking them on visits, helping to make sure they’re prepared for SATs and ACTs by getting them appropriate preparation if they need that, helping them through the decision making process. Just basically taking every student from where they are in 8th grade and making sure they have a really strong educational experience all the way through high school and that they get placed well for college.

BROOKE: So do you fund all of that then, through the foundation?

 PATRICIA: We fund a lot of it. Every student has a scholarship budget that kind of fits them and we try to put several priorities on there and then also try to accommodate students’ own wishlist items. So the first priority is going to be to make sure that the students are in a really strong high school or have access to some really good high school courses. Sometimes a student isn’t really in a position to go to a high school that is particularly well-suited to them, so we might have them go to the high school that is closest but also supplement courses at the local community college or through distance education or something like that.

We’ll make an effort to see that the priorities for a strong high school education are paid for. We generally negotiate. A lot of our students are going to a private high school, for example, but we’re not really a high school scholarship, so we’re not going to pay a $40,000 tuition to a boarding school; but we will help negotiate at that school, so that our students get really good financial aid. And then we fill in the things like a laptop or flights to and from home, books and uniforms, maybe the family contribution if it’s a couple of thousand dollars, fees for activities, things like that. We do pay for a summer experience each year, and then many other little things.

It’s a program that’s focused on filling in the gaps, so the our students have the things that families with greater financial means would usually be able to provide for their children. We’re trying to provide some of those things and we’re trying to provide the resources and the experiences that are going to allow the students to really live up to their potential. There are so many kids who come into the program in 8th grade and when we start talking about the scholarships and the resources that we’re going to be able to provide during the course of their time, their parents will say, “Oh yeah, we always wanted to do this summer program” or “We always wanted to have her in piano lessons, but we just couldn’t afford it. She was excited about it, really wanted to do it, and the only thing standing in the way was money.” So I think we’re trying to remove some of those little barriers.

BROOKE: You work for them for a long time, so I’m assuming you gain pretty strong relationships with them as well?

PATRICIA: Yeah, definitely. It differs from student to student, but I’ve been here now almost eight years, so I’ve had a chance to see a few of my cohorts of students all the way through from 8th grade through 12th grade and there are some really nice bonds that get formed. Some of those students I am already keeping in touch with as they go off to college and I know that we will stay connected for the long term. With others, maybe we don’t see or talk to each other that much once they finish high school, but there are events within the foundation that they sometimes come back for. We sponsor a few summer events and we just started an alumni event that’s held in the spring, so I think they stay connected to the community at large even if they don’t stay connected to me personally for a long time. Which is fine, I like that they know they have a nice network of peers.

BROOKE: I am assuming your job sort of changes on a day-to-day basis, but if you could describe your typical day, what would that look like?

PATRICIA: It does change a lot. My attention goes in a lot of different directions in this job. But on a given day, I’ll probably spend a portion of my time talking to students. I check in with the kids in my caseload about once every two weeks, so I will probably have a couple of half-hour phone calls scheduled in the afternoon. I might also be calling a vendor to see if I can set up lessons for a student. Today, for example, I have to follow up on someone who is going to give one of my students clarinet lessons and I need to call a stable for a student who wants to take riding lessons. So I’ll do a little bit of self-education around that.

I will be reviewing and revising goals today. The students are getting ready for—well, we’re getting reading for—planning for next year, and all of them will have individualized learning plans that include their goals, as well as the resources and programming we’re going to provide for them, their scholarships and budget. Lots of students have been completing their goals for next year and I’ll be reading a lot of those.

I’ll be checking-in with the advisors that I supervise. We also do that about once every two weeks formally, but pretty much every day somebody’s stopping by with a question about a students or a budget, or some sort of programming that we’re doing within our department. So I’ll do some chatting around that and do some documentation—we always have to take good notes about things, so I’ll be checking up on my notes. I’ll probably also correspond with a couple of parents. We talk primarily with the Scholar, as that’s where we’re trying to build our strongest rapport and because it’s the student’s education that we are trying to nurture, but the parents are the ones who are there 365 days a year and they know a lot of things about their children that we wouldn’t be able to be aware of. Most of our students are pretty far away from our office here. We have a couple of local students, but most of them are scattered far and wide across the country. Parents are a really helpful resource with checking in with them; it gives us a lot of good information, and they have questions too, and things that they’re wondering about. So we will chat with them maybe about the college process, or some questions about the interests that the student has, or there might be a financial change in the family that we need to follow up on, things like that. So I’ll probably have a couple of interactions with parents as well today.

BROOKE: What do you think is the most rewarding part of your job?

PATRICIA: I think there are a couple of things. Seeing students get a chance to do things that they’re really capable of but might not have had a chance to do otherwise is fantastic. So seeing them stretch and travel to places during the summer that would’ve been hard for them to imagine going to, seeing them become really good leaders, seeing them get access to a strong education—that’s really wonderful. And forming bonds like we were just talking about—that is very, very rewarding. I have a handful of students right now who I’ve worked with previously and they’re off at college; maintaining connections with them really makes me feel good. I feel like we’ve grown together and have all developed in really positive ways because of that connection.

I also think that having really kind, interesting, and talented colleagues is pretty amazing. Our Young Scholars program has a fairly big staff—at least, for a small organization. About 55 people work at the foundation, and the Young Scholars team has 18 people. So we are pretty big, but we are a really nice team and I think we complement each other well and we learn a lot from each other and depend on each other. So it feels really good to have the support of all of these other people and to be able to give that support back.

Those are probably the main things: the connections, personal connections. I’ve said several times that I put my counseling degree to use a lot within this job, even though it’s not a counseling position, per se. But just the interpersonal part of counseling, helping people figure things out, figure out difficult situations, or set goals for themselves, or work through something difficult. All of those things come up on a daily basis here and I think being able to apply lessons and concepts and practices from the different parts of my education to this job—that is really rewarding too.

BROOKE: So going off of that, what is the most challenging part of your job?

PATRICIA: Well, as I mentioned earlier, my energy has to go in a lot of directions, and that takes a lot of organization and the ability to multitask at a really high level and at sometimes a frenetic pace. That’s hard for me. I am a pretty calm person, so looking at my desk at the end of the day and seeing 8 or 10 different things that need to be followed up on is challenging.

I think, too, that even though we’re able to do a lot with the Scholars and their families, we still can’t do everything that we would like to. Our scope is primarily educational; that’s pretty much going to be the priority. That is fantastic and I think that does a lot for the students, but then there will always be other situations going on in their lives that we can’t fix. I’ve had students who have had incarcerated parents, or parents who have some sort of significant physical or mental illness, students who have other kinds of family difficulties or have had periods of homelessness, and a lot of times, that is something that their families have to figure out on their own, or with other resources in their communities. It can be hard to get on the phone and say, “Okay, let’s talk about the classes that you’re gonna take next year,” when you know that there is some other really difficult situation that’s going on in the background. So that’s hard. In the last couple of years, I’ve had a few students too who’ve had their own emotional and mental health difficulties, and I’m attached to them, and I care about them, and it’s difficult to see them go through that and know that they have to carry some of the burden on their own. I can’t fix it all.

BROOKE: You have students all over the United States, then?

PATRICIA: Yep, we all do. I think we have Scholars in 46 or 48 states, something like that.

BROOKE: If you could leave the reader with one final comment about your job or your passion for education, or really anything, what would you want it to be?

PATRICIA: I would recommend to other people to become really good listeners—really dedicating yourself to the art and practice of listening is important. I say that because I think there are points in life where you have to listen to yourself and to where you’re being called to do your work and live out your life, and you need to be thoughtful about that and responsive. Sometimes people ask me, sort of like you were just doing in the interview, “How did you get from this place to that place to the other place? How did you decide to do this educational program or that one?” It was just sort of a continuous process of discernment, listening to myself and thinking about what I needed to do to get to this next step in life, or recognizing when something really felt appealing to me. I had thought about doing counseling a long time ago, and that little voice in my head that said “you should try this out” never really disappeared and finally I got to a point where I listened to it and actually tried it out and I felt very grateful afterwards. So there’s a listening to yourself and the voices that guide you.

But also listening to other people. I think that is probably the most important thing that I can do and have done in any of my jobs or any of the roles within a particular job: just sit there and listen very actively and as compassionately as I can. It’s amazing how much better people feel, even if there’s nothing else that I’m able to do. If the person I am sitting with feels heard and feels cared about, then they may feel a little bit better. I think for me, working at that, working at being a good listener has been extraordinarily helpful and I think that is something that all of us could try to do a little bit more of, especially in those situations where your desire to help can only take you so far. As you know, when you go into education, it’s complex. There are going to be a lot of issues that you’ll come up against, and some of them you’ll be able to address and some of them you won’t. But if you’re able to help other people feel heard and empowered—or at least feel at ease—I think that will be a positive step and something that will be appreciated.

 

Interview with Leigh Arsenault

Leigh Arsenault is the Program Manager for Federal and State Policy at the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program, where she oversees the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. Before joining Aspen, Leigh served as a Senior Policy Advisor for higher education at the U.S. Department of Education. She also worked as National Youth Vote Director and National Policy Coordinator for Obama for America for the 2008 and 2012 elections, respectively.

THEO: Okay! So I’m going to pull up you’re LinkedIn profile.

LEIGH: Oh jeez, so you’ve been doing research!

THEO: Yes, I came prepared. . . .Okay, so you worked on the Obama campaign. How was that?

LEIGH: It was an incredible experience! It was my first job right out of college so I actually moved to New Hampshire when President Obama announced in 2007 that he was going to run. I worked the primaries as a campus organizer, so I moved to colleges across the state to organize student chapters of what was then called Students for Barack Obama. It was an amazing opportunity for me to be a part of something where you could really feel the day-to-day tangible impact you were having. I had to measure the number of people I was talking to, learn what they cared about, and figure out how I could then turn that into real organizing on the ground. It also taught me a lot of skills that I continue to bring to my day-to-day work.

THEO: So your interests fall on the political side of things, but also lie in education? Would you say that you’re more interested in one or the other, or are they equal for you?

LEIGH: I would say that I am now on a track that puts my career squarely in the field of education, particularly education policy—and, in my current work, also research on institutional practice. What I think connects those two things—my political experience with my work in education—is my own personal drive to dedicate my time to issues that will help make positive change, however that may be. With education, I think that if we can further improve outcomes for students and ensure greater equity within our system as a whole, that can have larger benefits for our society. As for my organizing work, I would call it more organizing work than political work really in terms of how I view it, but I was also compelled to work on things that would have an impact on social issues and help produce change that would really be meaningful to people.

THEO: So when would you say your interest in education began?

LEIGH: My mother was a teacher, my sister’s a teacher…I come from a background where the importance of education was told to me early and very often, so I always understood the importance of that. I’ll be honest though: When I was in college I didn’t know that I would work in the field of education. I didn’t plan for that at all. When I completed my work on the Obama campaign, I moved to Washington D.C. and I was hired to work at the Department of Education to support the Under Secretary of Education—her name is Martha Kanter, and she was the former Chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District. My job was to support her in her work and through that I was exposed to a number of different issues on a very global scale, in particular those related to higher education. Martha was the first person to take me under her wing (she does this with many people), and she quickly became a mentor to me. I was very lucky in that regard. Once I was exposed to higher ed issues, I began working on them and moving further down that path so, though I wish I could say I planned my career path all out from the beginning, it really evolved organically on its own for me.

THEO: Was there ever a point where you wanted to teach at a college or a high school or did you want to do something different with education from the start?

LEIGH: Working at the Department of Education, I was exposed to policy issues and I now work for a nonprofit organization that researches community colleges specifically in terms of the practices that result in successful outcomes for students. So I’ve continued to be exposed to that work, but I’m continually drawn down to the institutional level of education. In fact, I’m actually considering whether to continue my own education by pursuing a doctoral degree in higher education. And I hope to have the opportunity to teach—that’s something I’d really like to do. So the short answer is yes, I hope that I will teach in my career.

THEO: So you mentioned briefly the program you are working with now. You are the Program Manager for Federal and State Policy in the College Excellence Program at the Aspen Institute. Can you tell me a bit about that?

LEIGH: Our program is to support institutional practice and policy and leadership that results in high and improving outcomes for students. That’s a quick summary of the work. In terms of how we do that, we offer what’s called the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. It’s a million-dollar prize for which community colleges across the nation compete. To identify colleges doing ground-breaking work, first we look at data in terms of how students are varying in persistence and completion at a different colleges. We reach out to the top ten percent of community colleges from a pool of over a thousand and invite them to apply for the Prize. From the information they provide, we then learn more not only about how many of their students complete certificates and degree but what strategies the schools use to measure student learning. That is, what are students learning in their courses, and what value will those courses have for their jobs in the future? We learn how well colleges help students complete and also how well they help them land jobs, whether or not they earn livable wages, whether or not the outcomes achieved are equitable, and whether the students who would like to receive an education are able to obtain it. So that’s the work we do. It’s really fun, because we get to go to the colleges, spend time with professors, students, and college presidents and learn who they are, why they do the work they do, and how their personal dedication translates into the outcomes they’re achieving. At the end of the process, we acknowledge the top ten colleges and present the prize to the winner.

We also look at leadership for higher education more generally, so we try to study the qualities that make exceptional leaders–exceptional meaning they’re able to ensure that their institutions achieve great outcomes for students. The other thing we’ve been engaged in recently is looking at ways in which we can encourage the top colleges in the country to increase their diversity in terms of socio-economic status, how they can enroll greater numbers of students who may come from low-income families and who may not otherwise have been able to afford college without some sort of scholarship and assistance.

 THEO: So you work with colleges to make this happen or are you working with students?

LEIGH: We’re working with college presidents and with policy makers really, to ask the questions and look at the data to find out what the current level of socioeconomic diversity is for colleges in America and then ask the question: How can we improve upon that? How can we ensure that more low-income students are able to access and enroll in colleges where we know they can and should succeed?

THEO: How long has this program been going?

LEIGH: We’re pretty new. Our program was founded in 2010 and it was founded specifically for the purpose of delivering the Aspen Prize for Community Colleges that I mentioned.

THEO: Alright, I’m really curious: Can you describe your average work day?

LEIGH: Oh, that’s tough! Every day’s a little different…I’m trying to think what my day was like today and see how that maps out…So, for today, I basically edited a report—I’m giving a full laundry list, here—I edited the report, also edited the design component of that report. I staffed a meeting where my boss was producing video clips talking about who this year’s prize winners would be. I worked with our Communications team to develop press releases to talk about that. I had a staff meeting talking about program management and how to improve our budgeting practices in our program. And I worked with researchers to define outcome measurements for colleges that we’re working with that are setting improvement plans at their institutions. So as you can see, there is a whole host of things that occupy my day everyday.

THEO: Seems very busy! So you’ve been with this program since it started in 2010? 

LEIGH: I joined the program a year and a half ago.

THEO: And are you thinking about staying with them afterward? What do you see yourself doing in the future?

LEIGH: As I mentioned, I recently applied to graduate school, and I’m considering now whether to enroll in a PhD program for higher education. That would be a five-year program, so that would entail research and teaching experience and also developing the course skills and cognitive skills that I need to hopefully one day lead research efforts and work at an educational institution perhaps. So that’s really exciting.

In terms of the College Excellence Program, one of the really great things about working at a non-profit is that you get exposed to a lot of people and ideas, and the programming you do always has to quickly change—there’s a lot of change in terms of the projects that come your way. So, as I described, we have the Prize, and in our leadership work we’re developing a new curriculum to help prepare the next generation of community college leaders, and that adds a whole host of aspects to the work that are really exciting and involving. We have policy projects like the one I mentioned to you about increasing socio-economic diversity at colleges. That would be a year-long project and evolve into many other things, so it keeps me creative and on my toes at all times. For that reason, each work day is always different, but also very engaging and exciting. So, if I don’t continue my education, there’s a lot of opportunity along the road at Aspen. And the work I’d be doing here would have a lot of impact on the world, which is, you know, what you really want out of a career.

THEO: Going back a little to your time in the Education Department, I was wondering: How did you get involved in all this? Did they come to you, or did you seek out them? Again, I’m a college student, so I’m interested in how I can get involved in this as well as other career paths.

LEIGH: My work on the campaign was actually a natural pathway to that job because I was what is called a “political appointee.” Those who had worked for the President on his campaign were given priority for positions classified as political appointments, and because I would be starting out in an entry-level position in terms of providing administrative support, those kind of job opportunities were available to me. It took two long years on the campaign (and super long days!) to get there in DC, but that was my pathway. I know it’s not the natural pathway for everyone.

In fact, there are two additional pathways for government jobs in DC. Instead of being a political appointee, who’s only employed for the life of the administration, you could be a “career employee,” who’s in their job for their entire career, across multiple administrations, and really keep the government functioning at a high level. So for you, when you finish your degree, you could apply right away for a position in any of those offices as a career employee. There are also opportunities called Presidential Management Fellows, where you would apply to be a Fellow and spend time in multiple agencies. That’s a great opportunity to get a bird’s eye view of government/public service work and expose yourself to subjects you might want to grasp onto, such as education. Does that help?

THEO: Definitely, thank you. I’m a junior, so I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life after I graduate.

LEIGH: So you’re a junior, and you’re making decisions now. You’re an education minor.

THEO: Yes, I’m an English major with an education minor. My original plan was to become a high school teacher or teach at the college level, but I keep hearing, especially from Professor Steirer, that I should keep pushing myself and try to look at all the different avenues of the education sector. It’s a lot of exploring right now, and I’m still trying to figure out what to do. It’s pretty interesting.

LEIGH: That’s great! And when you think about it, what sort of careers pop out at you?

THEO: I don’t know yet. That’s a lot of the reason why I’m looking around. I had always thought the idea of being a teacher would be nice. I volunteer a lot at schools, and I like working with kids. I guess I just don’t know yet everything that’s out there, career-wise.

LEIGH: Teaching obviously is a great profession, but I agree there are a lot of other options and knowing that you like to work with people is good. Starting there with what you enjoy is a good place to start. I guess my message to you for right now would be: You don’t need to figure out what you’re going to do for your whole life. You need to figure out how you want to spend your time, what you think is rewarding for you, and what you think you’re good at—like working with people. Then spend your time in that way, and I think opportunities will always follow. So if education is the path for you, know that and follow that, but a lot of different things can emerge and you don’t know where they will lead you.

THEO: So plan for the next year or so rather than the next five or ten?

LEIGH: Someone once gave me the advice that you always need to have an answer for where you will be in five years, but it doesn’t mean you have to stick to that path. You just have to do the hard work to know you’re moving forward. You need to focus and know you’re doing good work and you need to have a plan, but being flexible is okay. Be adaptable. Things may change, and that may be for the good. As long as you know how you’re oriented, what you care about, and where you hope to go, you’re on your way.

THEO: Alright, well thank you. it’s been very informative!

LEIGH: Thank you! And good luck!

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