2015 Washington, DC Policy Trip

The second year cohort of the HALE doctoral program traveled to Washington, DC in October 2015 as part of EAD 967: Policy Development and Analysis in Postsecondary Education.  One student described the experience as "very good, informative, and a TON of interesting information," while sharing appreciation for "the opportunity to participate in such a unique out of classroom experience."

"it was very helpful to hear from people on the ground actually engaged in policy work. "

"[The speakers] deal with all aspects of policy, so it was great to hear their perspectives and their stories about the [policy] process."

Meetings Held

While there, the students had the opportunity to link theory to practice by participating in policy discussions with guest speakers from various higher education research and advocacy organizations, including: 

• American Council on Education,
• Association of American Universities,
• The College Board,
• Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities,
• Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities,
• Michigan State University's Governmental Affairs office,
• Harvard University's Federal Relations office, and others.  
  

Topics Addressed

Some of the policy topics covered during the two day visit included: higher education association perspectives on policy making, access and financial aid, sexual assault prevention, undocumented students, STEM education reform, policy research and strategy, internationalization and globalization, finding policy work in D.C., and more.   

One student shared the following sentiment about the link between the topics covered during the trip and the policy class experience:

"[The trip] was very powerful, and helpful, to contextualize what we have been reading and talking about in class." 

Additional details

To explore the trip in greater detail, the Trip Agenda and Speaker Bios documents are available for download in the Attachments section below.