September 2020
Building a Strong Foundation for a McCourt Education
This year, the McCourt School launched a new experiential learning orientation program called McCourt Foundations to facilitate the transition to policy school and introduce incoming students to a set of core leadership and communications skills to catalyze equity-centered policy work and advocacy. Students learned the fundamentals of engaging in difficult conversations with empathy and discussed tools for team building.
McCourt School Research Helps Support Domestic Violence Survivors
McCourt professors Pamela Herd and Don Moynihan’s research on administrative burdens inspired the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to design a new system to improve how it connects domestic violence survivors with support services and organizations. By reducing barriers in the referral process, the office went from connecting about 50 cases to community services a year to 500 cases a year –– a tenfold increase.
New study shows benefits, limits of cash transfers
A new study, designed by McCourt assistant professor Andrew Zeitlin and UC San Diego professor Craig McIntosh, found that cash transfers to young people in Rwanda were more effective than a job training program in helping them build assets, increase savings, and improve productivity. This latest research adds to the small but growing body of knowledge about cash benchmarking, or using the impact of cash as a baseline for program evaluation.
Connecting Data to Improve Health Care Delivery for Veterans
For over a decade, Nadhal Eadeh (EMPL’18) worked at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) supporting four different Under Secretary for Benefits and connecting with veterans and advocates across the United States. Eadeh learned how to navigate federal agencies and witnessed firsthand how policies shape and impact people’s day-to-day lives –– an experience that led him to focus his career on improving health care delivery for veterans.