If you walk through Boston City Hall, chances are you\u2019ll bump into someone from BU working on the front lines, building a city that works for all. In recent years, several PhD candidates from BU have accepted fellowships or internships with the City of Boston, forming a brain trust and working on many of the city\u2019s most ambitious initiatives. Some come from disciplines not traditionally thought of as feeders for public service\u2014like history and sociology\u2014but end up contributing in significant ways, many times picking up a love for municipal government that sticks. And many of those students arrive at City Hall via BU\u2019s <\/span>Initiative on Cities<\/span><\/a> (IoC).<\/span><\/p>\n Building a Pipeline to City Hall<\/b><\/p>\n By 2050, <\/span>nine out of every ten<\/span><\/a> Americans will live in or around cities, a 30 percent estimated rise in a century. This increased urbanization has led municipal governments to think more deeply about how cities can best serve their current and future residents\u2014and do so with environmental sustainability in mind. Naturally, cities have for years looked to universities for insights, as well as short-term infusions of student workers, interns, and fellows to help research and implement data-driven programs. That\u2019s certainly been true in <\/span>Boston, where the population<\/span><\/a> grew by more than nine percent between the 2010 and 2020 censuses. Lusk helped build the pipeline between local universities and Boston City Hall, first as an intern during her graduate studies at Harvard and in 2014 as founding executive director, with the late Menino (Hon. \u201901), of the IoC. Their goal was simple: bring fresh energy and talent into City Hall.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPaid fellowships are one of the proven ways to do that,\u201d Lusk says. \u201cThe confluence of personal experience, the mayor\u2019s enthusiasm, and this sense that BU has this amazing talent pool\u2026 meant that one of the first things we did was to start a summer program,\u201d including a dedicated BU graduate student fellowship in the Mayor\u2019s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM). In the years that followed, BU undergraduate and graduate students from CAS have served as fellows and interns at Boston City Hall through the IoC, the <\/span>Graduate Program in Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health<\/span><\/a> (BU URBAN), <\/span>and the <\/span>Center for Humanities<\/span><\/a>, in addition to other university departments and programs.<\/span><\/p>\n Taylor Cain (GRS\u201920) previously <\/span>directed the Mayor\u2019s Housing Innovation Lab<\/span><\/a> at the City of Boston, which explores new ways of increasing housing affordability, and she now serves as a senior policy adviser at the Boston Housing Authority. But that was not the career trajectory she imagined she\u2019d take while pursuing a PhD in sociology. Then she spent the summer of 2017 as the IoC\u2019s MONUM Summer Fellow, working with the City of Boston\u2019s transportation department. Despite growing up with a mom who worked in local government in Sacramento, Calif., Cain didn\u2019t expect that to be her future as well. She wanted to be a sociologist, after all, and she wondered if there was a place in city government for her. Instead, Cain found a culture that embraced her skills and offered her the chance to learn from a broad array of people. \u201c<\/span>That made me excited,\u201d she recalls, \u201cand it made me want to come back.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Cain was tasked with creating an equity framework with the Boston Transportation Department (BTD) for Vision Zero, a plan seeking to eliminate traffic fatalities. In meeting with both BTD staff and community groups, Cain identified a pressing need: an approach to decision-making and planning that centers the experiences of people. Her training as a qualitative researcher served her well in that fellowship, as well as the role she now holds at BHA.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI did ethnographic field work for my dissertation, and that involves spending a lot of time in communities trying to understand not just what is happening, but <\/span>how<\/span><\/i> something is happening, and what are the different ways that people are making meaning of seemingly mundane things,\u201d Cain says. \u201cI actually think that type of framework is really helpful in a space like city government which is filled in a lot of ways with lots of seemingly mundane activities that have really big impacts and consequences.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Boston was a pioneer among cities that are \u201cthinking big and dreaming big, being creative and innovative,\u201d according to <\/span>Maddie Webster<\/span><\/a> (GRS\u201923), <\/span>a PhD candidate in the <\/span>American & New England Studies Program<\/span><\/a> who specializes in Boston history. But innovation hasn\u2019t long been thought of as within the wheelhouses of cities. \u201cThis was something that happened in the private sector, in think-tanks, and maybe at the federal government level,\u201d Webster adds. \u201cCities were the machines trying to make sure the sidewalks are okay, and make sure that we have a good tax base.\u201d In her full-time role as a program manager for MONUM, however, Webster is able to connect big, history-informed thinking with the city\u2019s role in maintaining sidewalks\u2014literally. Webster has dived deeply into <\/span>an obscure, 19<\/span>th<\/span>-century Boston law<\/span><\/a> governing the maintenance of public sidewalks that pass over privately owned basements. According to that law, the owner of such a property is responsible for maintaining and repairing the sidewalks that cover their basement rooms\u2014known as \u201careaways\u201d\u2014a responsibility Boston has historically found difficult to enforce. Since coming to City Hall in July 2022, Webster has been working to better understand the law, how it can be enforced or revised, and its implications for both building owners and the City of Boston.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI am the areaways person now for the city,\u201d says Webster, who worked as a research assistant in the IoC and completed a yearlong fellowship with the Boston Public Library\u2019s Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center before joining MONUM. \u201cI am the person doing the legal research. I\u2019ve been doing the historical research. I\u2019ve been doing the mapping [of all the areaways in Boston]. We need to figure out a way to work with property owners to make sure that they abide by the city ordinances and actually maintain their sidewalks.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Through a public policy fellowship provided by the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, BU URBAN PhD candidate <\/span>Claudia Diezmart\u00ednez<\/span><\/a> (GRS\u201927) has been working with the City of Boston\u2019s Environment Department to implement the city\u2019s <\/span>pledge<\/span><\/a> to become carbon-neutral by 2050. Specifically, Diezmart\u00ednez looks at the social, health, economic, and racial justice implications of decarbonization efforts\u2014work that incorporates aspects of her own academic research, some of which has been supported by the IoC. Diezmart\u00ednez\u2019s Rappaport Fellowship ended in August 2022, but she was asked to stay on in a part-time capacity to engage with environmental justice leaders, residents, and building owners around the development of regulations. Where she might have defaulted toward continuing in academia after graduation, Diezmart\u00ednez\u2019s\u00a0 experience at City Hall has \u201cproved that a career in public service is also a good opportunity for me,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n A Life Changing Experience<\/b><\/p>\n Whether or not a BU student chooses to remain in local public service after their internship or fellowship, Lusk says such an experience is valuable. Her own time at City Hall\u2014especially while working under Mayor Menino\u2014changed her life indelibly by demonstrating how cities can change the course of residents\u2019 lives for good.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSome people will go work in government, love it, and stay,\u201d she says.<\/span> \u201c<\/b>It\u2019s equally important that people go and have firsthand experience and exposure to government if they care about policy.\u201d That experience can stay with them even if they remain in academia. \u201cThey\u2019re much more insightful about what the real problems are about, the role of community, and the importance of translating research findings for policymakers in a way that\u2019s actionable and timely.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Steve Holt The late Thomas M. Menino once characterized Boston\u2014where he served as mayor from 1993 to 2014\u2014as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21329,"featured_media":68203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[195],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21329"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68202"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68711,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68202\/revisions\/68711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"\/cas\/files\/2023\/02\/10.31.13KatharineLusk1165x7-150x150.jpg\")
\u201cWe recruit people who are highly entrepreneurial, very self-directed to move at a swift pace, to encounter barriers and find their way around them, and are very humble and relationship oriented,\u201d says <\/span>Katharine Lusk<\/span><\/a>, codirector and founding executive director of the IoC, which has sent four PhD candidates from CAS\u2014as well as many undergraduates\u2014to Boston City Hall as fellows or interns since 2014. \u201cWhat\u2019s so exciting about this is that we\u2019re attracting a much wider diversity of disciplines into City Hall than some other programs, and perhaps people who wouldn\u2019t find it on their own.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/cas\/files\/2023\/02\/Taylor_Cain_portrait_square-format-150x150.jpg\")
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