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The Center for Human Potential and Public Policy
Six new master's students and one Ph.D. student were awarded CHPPP McCormick Tribune fellowships for the 2001/2002 academic year. The fellows, whose backgrounds are in a variety of fields, share a common interest in child and family policy. CHPPP also recruited a new faculty member, Shelley Clark, a Princeton Ph.D. in public policy whose interests focus on issues of reproductive health both domestically and internationally. Conducting and disseminating research that advances
knowledge on the development of human potential is a primary goal
for the CHPPP. Several Harris School faculty members affiliated with CHPPP
have presented their research at conferences in the past few months including:
The Conversations in Human Potential and Public Policy Workshops are designed to explore issues and research related to human potential, including influences on cognitive, social, emotional and moral development, as well as motivation and ability. Ten workshops were held during the past academic year, featuring guest speakers from the United States, Great Britain and Sweden. To obtain information about workshop schedules, affiliated research
project abstracts and faculty profiles visit our website.
The Center for Urban Research and Policy Studies (CURPS) The fourth annual Illinois Welfare Reform Symposium - "The Next Stage of Welfare Reform" - was held on October 5, 2001, at the University of Chicago Gleacher Center. More than 350 people from across the state attended the all-day event, which was sponsored by CURPS and Voices for Illinois Children. Susan Mayer, associate professor at the Harris School, moderated the afternoon plenary session, which focused on issues related to the pending reauthorization of federal welfare reform legislation. Several other Harris School faculty members - Robert LaLonde, Helen Levy, and Cybele Raver - served as panelists in various breakout sessions. On November 14, CURPS resumed its quarterly series of briefing sessions on newly completed and ongoing research related to welfare reform in Illinois. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale of Northwestern University presented the first wave of findings about the impact of welfare reform on the health and development of children in Chicago, Boston, and San Antonio. CURPS has collaborated with the Joint Center for Poverty Research and the Welfare Information Network to create a new Internet web site that serves as a research clearinghouse on welfare policy in Illinois. The URL is: http://www.financeprojectinfo.org/iwin/clearinghousehome.asp. The web site has a comprehensive compilation of research and analysis on Illinois welfare reform, with links to research summaries and complete documents. The web site will also contain the most current state-specific data on TANF, Food Stamps, Medicaid, and other public assistance programs, as well as data on poverty, income, and employment in Illinois. The eighth Chicago Assembly, "Disparities, Opportunities, and Community Development in Metropolitan Chicago," is being planned for spring 2002. The program will focus on the policy challenges of reducing disparities and expanding opportunities in the Chicago region, with particular attention to policy strategies that link together economic development, workforce development, and community development. The program will be co-sponsored by Chicago Metropolis 2020. CURPS has received a planning grant from the Michael Reese Health Trust to develop a multi-year project on Medicaid in Illinois. The project will include a study of Medicaid enrollment and spending trends in the new era of welfare reform, a detailed analysis of service utilization by major Medicaid eligibility groups, an examination of Medicaid programs for special-needs populations, and a study of the politics of Medicaid policymaking in Illinois. During the current academic year, CURPS has continued its collaboration with the Public Policy Student Association (PPSA) in sponsoring a monthly series of "brown-bag lunch" sessions with policy practitioners from the Chicago area. On November 5, Dr. Whitney Addington, senior executive with Chicago Metropolis 2020 and former president of the Chicago Board of Health, discussed the health risks of being uninsured. On November 19, John Bouman of the National Center on Poverty Law discussed the progress of welfare reform in Illinois.
The Joint Center for Poverty Research (JCPR) In the 2001-2002 academic year, the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research (JCPR) will conduct nine poverty research seminars, two research conferences, and eight research briefings, will support nine graduate fellows, and will produce six issues of its newsletter, Poverty Research News. Past issues of the newsletter covered the incentive effects of tax and transfer policies, health in low-income populations, and welfare reform reauthorization. Fall 2001 seminar presentations included "Involvement of TANF Applicants with Child Protective Services: Implications for Program and Policy," "A Dynamic Analysis of the Economic Consequences of Growing Up in a Single Parent Family: Does Welfare Help?" and "The Effects of Work on Parenting Among Low-Income Mothers with Young Children." Winter 2002 seminar presentations will include "Adolescents' School and Work: The Effect of State Welfare Policies," "Civil Rights, the War on Poverty, and Black-White Convergence in Infant Mortality in Mississippi" and "Hope for Whom? Financial Aid for the Middle Class and its Impact on College Attendance." "Abortion as Pregnancy Insurance," "Food Insecurity and Public Assistance" and "Race, Space and Job Accessibility" will be presented in Spring 2002. The JCPR holds research briefings that are designed to share current findings with state and city policy makers and journalists, and representatives from social service agencies and foundations. In the 2001-2002 academic year, briefings topics will cover such areas as welfare reform and child protective services, teen childbearing, public housing and housing mobility. During the spring 2002 academic quarter two congressional briefings are planned: School Reform and Disadvantaged Children, which will examine how important school reforms have affected the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children and Welfare and Children and Families that will explore how states can use welfare reform to help low-income families and children. On February 28, 2002-March 1, 2002 JCPR will hold its annual Research Institute. The conference will focus on the hard-to-employ and welfare reform. Papers will cover, among other topics, the challenges of designing and implementing programs to serve those with mental health barriers to work; emerging work-based strategies to help this population find and keep jobs; the prevalence of domestic violence; the effectiveness of prison-based training and education programs; and several papers on disability, substance abuse, and transportation barriers to working. Using funds from HHS-ASPE and the Census Bureau, for 2001-2002 the JCPR has awarded grants for nine research projects, which include studies of non-marital teenage childbearing, the economic costs of growing up in a single parent family and the economic well being of children and families after welfare reform. The JCPR has also awarded four grants through its USDA ERS food assistance grants program. In addition, the JCPR is funding nine graduate students for the 2001-2002 academic year. The JCPR website continues to be an important resource for research on poverty in the United States. The site features working papers from JCPR affiliates, online editions of Poverty Research News, a policy brief series, a research brief series, online books and reports (e.g., The Effects of Government Programs and the Well-Being of Families, and The Effects of Welfare Reform in Rural America), current data on poverty in the U.S., information clearinghouses (i.e., compilations of all JCPR online research on a particular topic); conference summaries and papers presented; and general information about upcoming JCPR events. The JCPR working paper series continues to expand, with 29 papers added since January 2001, for a total of 241 papers. Poverty Research News was one of the most popular sites, read by roughly 1700 visitors, and downloaded by nearly 400. Overall, in October 2001, users downloaded over 7000 copies of research from the JCPR website.
Cultural Policy Center (CPP) The Pew Charitable Trusts has awarded Harris School Visiting Professor Mark Schuster a $186,000 grant for his comparative study of state cultural policy, "Mapping State Cultural Policy: A Pilot Project." The study will develop a comprehensive map of the cultural policy institutions in a single state (the state of Washington), providing local policy and decision-makers in that state with an understanding of the entire network of arts and culture policy making and implementation. The pilot study will serve as a testing ground for a larger study of 6 - 8 states that will identify different state models of cultural policy: distinct mechanisms of funding, distribution channels, inter-agency collaboration, and oversight institutions. Professor Schuster, currently on sabbatical from his position as professor of urban cultural policy at MIT, is also teaching two courses at the Harris School. Designing Cultural Policy, offered in the fall quarter, trains graduate students in the practical design, implementation, and evaluation of cultural policy. During the winter quarter Schuster will offer Comparative Cultural Policy, a graduate seminar examining policy in various national contexts. Professor Don Coursey has received a $75,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to hold a conference on the application of the contingent valuation method to cultural policy. Part of his larger study, "Measuring the Health of Our Common Culture," the conference will gather economists and policy practitioners to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this increasingly influential methodology. The invitation only conference will take place on February 1-2. Some of the Rockefeller grant is dedicated to Center operating expenses. Professor Colm O'Muircheartaigh continues his research project, "Measuring the Aesthetic Experience," with a working group meeting on December 7-8. The meeting follows up on an earlier conference held in May, where attendees discussed possible methods of quantifying aesthetic experience. The December meeting brought together social scientists and arts professionals to plan possible survey methodologies, and to discuss methods of calculating psychophysical and behavioral responses to exposure to the arts. A feature of these Cultural Policy Center projects is an emphasis on gathering a wide range of expertise through interdisciplinary teams of collaborators, including input from economists, policymakers, and arts and culture practitioners. The Center's recent major public conference exemplifies this commitment. The conference, "Playing by the Rules: Video Games and Cultural Policy," was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the University of Chicago campus on October 26-27 for an audience of nearly 200 people. The program was comprised of three public roundtables, six paper panels, and a screening of a documentary produced for the conference. Papers from the conference are posted online at http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/agenda2.html. A conference report is under preparation, and a larger publication is being planned. Center associate director Christopher Perrius and Packard Foundation Cultural Policy Fellow Siu-Yuin Pang, an MA student at the Harris School, are completing a survey of arts professionals for a forum to be hosted by the Illinois Arts Alliance (IAA). Part of a larger IAA project to determine career and leadership trends in the arts in Illinois, the survey gauges job satisfaction and career paths, and identifies types of arts organizations that are likely to have difficulty finding new leadership as the current generation of leaders approaches retirement. The survey also determines training and other resource needs for emerging arts leaders. Under the supervision of Center Faculty Director Lawrence Rothfield, Harris School students Cory Roman, Andrea Jett, Rodrigo Garza-Arreola, and Craig Hunter are finalizing findings about the workings of mid-level Chicago-area arts organizations, following through on work they did this past summer as interns in the Chicago Office of Cultural Affairs, which has been developing a financial survey of the cultural landscape in Chicago. |
