Carolyn J. Hill PhD 2001

As an assistant professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Carolyn Hill (PhD’01) is training the next generation of public policy students. Hill came to the Harris School with a desire to blend a wide set of interests into a program of study. “I’ve always been interested in both individual and organizational factors in public policies — across a broad range of policy issues,” she says. “I thought that a policy school was the best place to put these interests together.” The Harris School offered her that opportunity.

When she isn’t in the classroom teaching quantitative methods, program evaluation, or public management courses, Hill conducts research focused on the design and management of publicly supported programs, particularly those that serve poor or near-poor families. Her dissertation examined whether and why clients of some welfare-to-work offices fared better than clients at other offices, and she has continued this line of research. She is currently working on a project that examines collaboration among public schools and other organizations. Hill has co-authored a book (with the Sydney Stein, Jr., Professor of Public Management, Emeritus Laurence E. Lynn, Jr., and fellow Harris School alumna Carolyn J. Heinrich, PhD’95): Improving Governance: A New Logic for Empirical Research. She has also worked with researchers at MDRC, a nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization dedicated to issues concerning the well-being of low-income populations, to examine the management, organization, and performance of welfare-to-work programs.

Hill continually draws on the rigorous quantitative coursework that the Harris School demanded, in both the classroom and her research.

“My years at the Harris School were challenging in a lot of ways, but I grew into it. The core courses and electives provided a technical base and a great exercise of the mind—how to think and analyze critically. For research purposes, these skills are incredibly important.”

“The Harris School also had good street credentials,” she says. “I knew I needed a solid skill set and a school with a good reputation, so Chicago was a good choice. People know that the Harris School emphasizes quantitative methods and theory-based policy study.”

The advice she gives her students? “Know your quantitative skills—you can always get a job with those skills.”

In the end, she says, “I made some great friends at the Harris School, and we learned a lot from the program and from each other. The Harris School was the right thing for me, the right mix.”