Associate Professor Trina Shanks has been named a Nonresident Fellow at the Urban Institute, the nonprofit research organization founded in 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson to address the issues facing American cities including poverty and inequality. Based in Washington D.C., the Urban Institute combines rigorous research with analysis to develops solutions that shape public policy.
Shanks will contribute her expertise on poverty, wealth inequality and child development to the institute’s research projects, and collaborate with colleagues in her field, many of whom she knows from conferences and past collaborations. “There are folks at the Urban Institute that I’ve wanted to work with for a very long time,” she says. “When I told them that I was going on sabbatical, they put together a ‘dream team’ for me to work with, which will give us the chance to continue these conversations.”
As part of her fellowship, she will have the opportunity to contribute to the Urban Wire blog and hopes to learn from the institute’s successful communication and social media strategies.
She is particularly excited to work with the institute’s robust microsimulation models, which use historical census and tax data to forecast the effects of a specific policy, or a combination of policies, on communities and families. Shanks will run simulations specifically focused on Michigan and Detroit.
“The National Academy of Science released a report on how to reduce child poverty by 50% in 10 years. The team at Urban who helped with that analysis will work with me to see what this simulation would look like for Michigan and Detroit; we can then talk through the implications that might be useful for the state or the city to consider.”
Shanks’ research focuses on the relationship between assets, poverty and children’s well-being. She is currently a co-investigator for the SEED Impact Assessment Study, which tests the impact of offering Head Start families 529 college education plans for their enrolled children. She also oversees the evaluation of summer youth employment in Detroit.
Shanks is a Rhodes Scholar and a former Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador where she worked in micro-enterprise development. She was recently elected to serve as a member of the Grand Challenges for Social Work Executive Committee.