Community Notes

Awards / Grants

Associate Professor C. Cybele Raver has received a $3.3 million, five-year grant to support a Chicago-based collaborative research project on school readiness. The study will examine young children’s emotional readiness for school and academic achievement as they make the transition from preschool to elementary school. This grant was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Administration for Children and Families, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, and the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.

The Harris School’s Center for Human Potential and Public Policy, headed by C. Cybele Raver, also received a three-year $804,000 grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation in September. The grant will be used to expand their programmatic offerings and to strengthen their leadership role in the field of child and family policy studies.

Professor Robert LaLonde and Senior Researcher Susan George received a $250,000 grant from Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority for “Evaluation of the Illinois Going Home Program,” a further aspect of their multi-year study on incarceration and prisoner re-entry in Cook County and Illinois.

Irving and Joan Harris gave the Cultural Policy Center a multi-year gift to cover infrastructure costs. Beginning in the 2003-04 academic year, the grant is $185,000 per year for three years. A consistent source of support from the Center’s inception, the Harris’ newest gift supports staff members, graduate research assistantships, as well as visiting scholars and instructors.

The National Science Foundation has awarded sizable grants to several Harris School faculty members. Jeffrey Miyo and Sean Gailmard will examine different channels legislatures use to shape policy decisions in administrative agencies after laws are passed in their project “A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation of the Returns to Legislative Oversight” ($181,500). In “NSNX and Social Choice Experiments” ($100,000), Howard Margolis exploits a novel method of analyzing data from experiments on cooperation.

Professor Will Manning received a $69,000 grant (“Competition, Volume, and Outcome in Cardiovascular Care in California, 1992-1998”) from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Northwestern University. The question is whether the advantage of higher inpatient volumes are being eroded by competitive pressures.

Congratulations also to Professor Robert Michael who was named the Harris School’s Levin Faculty Fellow for 2003-04. Congratulations to Associate Professor David Meltzer who won the Young Investigator Award for 2003 from the National Association of Inpatient Physicians and was named one of the 2003 Leaders in General Internal Medicine by the Midwest Society for General Internal Medicine.

Congratulations to Harris School students Isabel Josie Anadon (MPP’05), Marianne Anderson (MPP’04), David Beeman (MPP’04), Amer Hasan (MPP’04), Sam Jordan (MPP/JD’04), Caryn Kuebler (MPP’04), Sarah Lee (MPP’04), Heather Rogers (MPP’04), Jennifer Novak (MPP’04), and Leslie Sperber (MPP’04), who were awarded Graduate Research Assistantships by the Cultural Policy Center. Also receiving assistantships are Nadav Enbar enrolled in the Masters of Arts Program in Social Science (MAPSS) and Len Albright and Xuefie Fen, both enrolled in the Dept. of Sociology's PhD program. The $5,000 award provides financial and educational support for students interested in cultural policy research. Recipients will work on current faculty initiated projects or on self-designed research projects on topics ranging from the arts workforce and its place in the economy to the future of public television.

Congratulations to John Erik Garr (MPP’05), named an American Marshall Memorial Fellow for 2004 by the German Marshall Fund in October. The program provides an exchange of young leaders between Western Europe and the United States to build a shared understanding of transatlantic business and policy issues.

Welcome to Celina Chatman who joined the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy (CHPPP) as associate director in June, and to Diane Grams who joined the Cultural Policy Center as associate director in August. Welcome also to Jay Pennington, the Harris School’s new IT director and to Software Support Specialists Syed Mustafa Hahmi and Shamus Regan, as well as Susan Rivan, the new special assistant to the dean.

Welcome also to Alicia Menendez who has joined the Harris School as a research associate. She studies economic development, poverty and inequality, household surveys and household behavior, focusing on Latin America and South Africa. This year, she will be teaching “Development Economics: Latin American Topics.”

Congratulations to Ilana Cohen, formerly JCPR’s business manager, who joined the Career Services Office as associate director in August.

Farewell and best wishes to Christine Johnson who has left Career Services for opportunities elsewhere, and to Matthew Mohlenkamp of JCPR and the Harris School, who has gone to work in an economically challenged area outside of Lima, Peru helping to address a variety of social service needs.

Dean Mayer was in Mexico City in September and visited with area alumni at a luncheon. In attendance was Oliver Azuara (MPP’02), Victor Cardenas (MPP’02), Gerardo de la Pena Hernandez (MPP’01), Fernando Floresgomez (MPP’98, MBA’98), David Garcia-Junco (AM’95 and current PhD candidate), Rodrigo Garza-Arreola (MPP’02), Sarah L. Gordon (MPP’96), Eunice Hernandez (MPP’99), Manuel Matus-Velasco (MPP’96), Marco Mena Rodriguez (MPP’94), Mario Mendoza (MPP’00), Carlos Nieto-Parra (MPP’95), Carlos Eugenio Paz (MPP’99), Gabriela Perez-Yarahuan (MPP’96 and current PhD candidate), Delia Laura Sour (MPP’00, PhD’02), Luis Urrutia (MPP’98), as well as Lester Garcia Olvera (MPP’96), Claudia Rodriguez Solorzano (MPP’01), and Jose F. Tapia-Martinez (MPP’98) who deserve special thanks for helping with local arrangements.