Feature

Student Spotlight: Beth Munnich

As a graduating MPP student, Beth Munnich presented her honors thesis last month to faculty and students. With this discussion, Munnich drew to a close a year-long project which only a few students attempt.

"It was a good opportunity to work closely with a faculty member who was excited about my research question," she said. "And it's really hard to write a research paper in a ten-week quarter, so I had a whole year to work with one data set."

Munnich's thesis focused on the role food stamps play in the public safety net for households headed by single mothers. She found that use among families living near the poverty line has increased, but dropped for those living in extreme poverty. While the welfare reforms and booming economy of the 1990s helped some single mothers move out of poverty, cash welfare programs were limited and a gap in assistance was created. Munnich's findings suggest that single mothers may be using food stamps to help fill this gap, but obstacles to obtaining food stamps exist for women who are unable to work.

Prior to attending the Harris School, Munnich worked at a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that supported and advocated for rural communities. Much of her work related to food, such as linking farmers to venues-like restaurants and markets-that would purchase their products.

"I was really interested in food when I came here. I started working with Assistant Professor Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, who does a lot of work with food stamps," she said. "That's really when I started to focus on a lot of the food stamp data and began reading a lot of the literature. [My thesis topic] became clear."

Munnich hopes to publish part of her thesis over the summer before she heads to the University of Notre Dame to pursue a PhD in economics, primarily focusing on health economics. Munnich said she was drawn to the program's curriculum structure and faculty-in particular Bill Evans and James Sullivan. Due to an abundance of information on the Food Stamp Program, she hopes to be able to study it in the future as she learns more research methodologies.

Of her path to the Harris School, Munnich said, "I knew as soon as I graduated from college I wanted to do more school." Initially interested in a master's degree in urban planning, Munnich quickly realized she was interested more in policy side of urban planning-rather than the design side-and no one particular program stood out to her.

She was also hesitant to pursue an interdisciplinary graduate degree. Concerned that professional programs would lack the methodological focus she was seeking, going to graduate school for a public policy degree was far from Munnich's mind. But the more she looked at graduate programs, the more an MPP appealed to her given the real-world applicability of the degree.

"If you want to do anything quantitative or theoretical, the Harris School is the place for that," she said. "And I liked the fact that I had a lot of economists to work with and Diane [Whitmore Schanzenbach] is here doing work I was interested in, which I think is fairly rare for an MPP program given my area of interest."

As her time in Chicago comes to an end, Munnich reflected on her experience here. "I'll remember that the Harris School is a very humbling place to be. When you're working with the best of the best, the classes aren't easy and the environment is challenging in an exciting way. So while at times it was frustrating, in the end it's something I'm thankful I have."