Davis Sisters Research Beyond the Classroom
Summer break is the perfect opportunity for students to bring recently acquired skills and the research they started in Williamsburg into the world. This desire to take research from the classroom to the field is exactly what brought sisters Caroline and Megan Davis, ’17, halfway across the globe this past summer. Caroline, who has been involved with ITPIR since her freshman year, headed to the Philippines as an AidData Summer Fellow in the Philippines. Megan joined a team of undergraduate research assistants who traveled to Tanzania with Prof. Phil Roessler, Director of the Center for African Development (CAD).
“I had seen a lot about summer research in the ITPIR digest and through previous summer fellows’ experiences, and it sounded like a really good opportunity to use the skills and knowledge I’ve gained working on projects at ITPIR in a real development setting,” Caroline said.
Caroline joined the ITPIR team as a freshman, looking for research experience in the social sciences. She originally worked on the Reform Incentives Project, then was a member of the AidData Survey Practice team, and later worked as a research assistant for AidData Executive Director Brad Parks.
Megan also started out working with AidData, but has now transitioned to working with CAD.
“I was interested in development by the end of my freshman year, so I applied to AidData sophomore year, and worked on the survey practice team,” Megan said. “Then I saw an ad for the Center for African Development in the ITPIR newsletter, and I applied for a field research position, and that’s how I ended up at the Center for African Development.”
After taking a Mixed Methods course, taught by Phil Roessler, Director of CAD, Megan was selected to do summer research in Tanzania. Megan was based in Dar es Salaam and joined three other undergraduates working on the Gates Foundation funded project. “We are finishing phase two of an experiment, which includes a sample of 400 women, and then CAD is gearing up for phase three later on, which includes 2,000 women.”
Half a world away Caroline was based near Manila, and embedded with an organization called the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability. “I worked on Citizen Participatory Audit Initiative, and the main goal of that is to engage citizens with their government and to encourage the citizens and civil society to audit what the government is doing and different projects and what not, and a big part of that is disaster related projects,” Caroline said.
Both Caroline and Megan believe their previous classes at William and Mary prepared them well for their summer research. Last spring, Megan took Professor Roessler’s Mixed Methods class, and explains that learning about experimental design has helped her to contribute to the CAD project. Last fall, Caroline took Intro to GIS and in the spring semester she took an economics class with Ariel BenYishay, the Chief Economist at AidData.
“It’s kind of similar to the Mixed Methods class,” she said of BenYishay’s class. “Basically we learned different applied econometric methods applied to social science research. That has also helped me develop a researcher's sensibility.”
The sisters said that although most of their work is separate, it is helpful having each other to talk to about their individual projects.
“We talk about it a lot with each other and I think that has help each of us develop our own interests and sense of our roles at ITPIR,” Caroline said.