Ms. Debra Monroe-Lax, a doctoral student at the dept. of public policy & administration, Jackson State University, has received job offer from the Joint Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER), in the Mississippi Legislature.
At the PEER, as policy analyst, she will conduct program evaluations of Mississippi state or local agencies, programs, and contractors, and others.
While taking the coursework in the doctoral program, she has built her research skill by joining the MURC-RAND project on Jackson Public School performance assessment as graduate research assistant in 2016-17. Also she attended multiple academic conferences, including the National Conference of Minority Public Administrators in 2016, the 5th ASPA Annual International Young Scholars Workshop in Capte Town, South Africa in 2016, and the Annual Conference of Mississippi Political Science in 2017.
She has published a peer-reviewed journal article as the leading author ( Monroe-Lax, D., and J.-Y. Ko. 2017. Economic determinant analysis of student academic performance in Mississippi public Schools. Journal of Public Management and Social Policy. 24(1), Article 4. http://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/jpmsp/vol24/iss1/4/), and received the Best Graduate Student Research Award during the annual conference of Mississippi Political Science Association, Jackson, Mississippi, Feb. 10-11, 2017.
Currently she is working on her dissertation (title: "The Effectiveness of the Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Initiative: A Case Study of the S.H.A.P.E. Diversion Intervention in Public Schools in Memphis Tennessee"; Advisor: Dr. Jae-Young Ko). She is expected to defend her dissertation by October, 2018.
Congratulations, Debra.
