NOTES FROM THE FIELD: HANA DAI '20

Hana Dai '20 interned at the Brookings Institution during the 2018 fall term. The following is an excerpt from her internship report.

This fall, I interned at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Brookings is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy organization that analyzes public policy issues and produces evidence-based policy recommendations. In particular, I focused on the intersection of political science and education at the Brown Center on Education Policy, a domestic issues division of Brookings.

As a research intern at the Brown Center on Education Policy, I worked on projects focusing on community college access, governance of education policy, teacher diversity, the gender wage gap in teaching, and the impact of the midterm election on education. More specifically, I created comprehensive literature reviews on potential research topics, an excel dataset focusing on education policy governance across states, and a policy-tracker focusing on the role of education policy in the midterm election.

In addition, I analyzed data visualizations showing the current teacher workforce using STATA, contributed to three Brown Center Chalkboard blog posts, and contributed a research idea on the promotion of male social studies teachers and the correlation to the gender wage gap within teaching. This experience taught me that even as an intern I can contribute innovative research ideas that ultimately become policy papers. It also was interesting watching an idea conceptualized from a general literature review become a full report. My own research project, to be published as a blog post on the Brookings website, focused on the impact of instructional coaches in schools.

At the Brown Center, I was able to research a wider range of education policy issues, including K-12 state education policy governance and the impact of instructional coaching in schools. My research required me to apply my enlarged data-analysis skillset and write in a professional manner. Lastly, I learned to be deliberate with my supervisor’s time by making a list of questions that came up as I worked on challenging data projects. I look forward to applying my new knowledge towards a graduate degree in education policy, or a future career in the research, economics policy, and education policy fields.

I would like to thank the Rockefeller Center for giving me the opportunity to intern at Brookings, and my colleagues at the Brown Center for creating a challenging yet rewarding internship experience.

The Rockefeller Internships Program has funding for Dartmouth undergraduate students to help defray the cost of living expenses associated with a full-time, unpaid, leave-term internships in the fields of public policy, public affairs, and social entrepreneurship.