I was a summer research intern at Leadership for Equity (LFE), a systems change and advisory organization that works with local and state governments to co-create programs that shift teaching-learning practices and improve student learning in India. LFE is leading the capacity-building mission of the World Bank funded SALT (Strengthening Andhra’s Learning Transformation) project and works with various actors in the state education department of Andhra Pradesh, including teachers, district officials, and secretaries. As part of my internship, I led a research project to study the patterns of time use and impact of administrative tasks on the instructional time of public school teachers in the state. LFE hopes that this research will inform policy changes to reduce or restructure the administrative burden of teachers so they are able to spend more time on core teaching-learning activities. My effort on research design and pilot will help the organization scale the research up to other state education departments as well.

I am currently pursuing a master's in public administration with a focus on data and quantitative analysis at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. I have taken courses in quantitative analysis, which gave me a theoretical foundation of research design and data collection using surveys. I was able to apply my learning in a real-world situation in order to impact policy evaluation during my summer internship. I applied the statistical concept of sampling, statistical inference and regression analysis in setting up the research framework for the study. I also worked with other nonprofit and government actors, and SIPA’s courses in management and professionalism helped me build effective stakeholder relationships. Communication skills that I have developed during my time at SIPA also helped me in conducting training and collaborating with other employees at the organization. It also helped me communicate effectively on paper through documents, write-ups, and presentations.

My background prior to beginning the masters program at Columbia was in education policy and research at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and a Teach for India fellow. Although I had collaborated with NGOs previously, I had not led an evaluation exercise for a nonprofit. Nonprofits are often environments with significant resource constraints. It was challenging to achieve the balance between leading a high-quality data collection exercise and remaining lean in terms of costs and resources spent. This was a new experience for me and definitely one that was very valuable. I am sure that the mindset of being dedicated to high quality while trying to minimize costs will help me in my future work in the development sector. Another challenge was to lead all activities of the project single-handedly, including research design, creating the survey, interview and focus group tools, digitizing these tools, training the field team, and field management. Although I collaborated with other employees in the organization, I had to hold myself accountable for the completion of these tasks, as well as the quality of work delivered.

The summer internship was a great experience for me. Firstly it helped me realize that I could lead a research study from scratch and gave me a lot of confidence in my own capabilities. Prior to SIPA, my role at J-PAL supported principal investigators to run data collection and analysis for randomized controlled trials in education policy in India. I had a lot of support while picking up many skills, and was not single-handedly accountable for the end-to-end processes of the research study. During this internship however, I managed to do all tasks myself with feedback from professors at SIPA, J-PAL as well as colleagues at LFE. I had sufficient guidance but also worked in a largely independent manner. Another learning for me was the ability to run high-quality research within the resource constraints of a nonprofit. This skill and realization will help me take a leaner approach to resource management and planning in my future work as a developmental professional.