Undergraduate Research
ILR students are actively engaged in research about the workplace. Here are the stories of recent graduates who found research a most exciting aspect of their ILR experience. We invite you to explore the exciting opportunities for undergraduate research here at ILR.
A Presidential Research Scholarship: The Defining Experience
"Cornell awards this scholarship from the applicant pool of the Freshman Class. I have been doing research since my freshman year. The first year I researched for Professor Lowell Turner and looked at labor — management partnerships. I found that after two years, you are either very interested in labor and labor relations and labor law or you're not. As I have progressed, I have been more interested in organizational behavior principles than labor per se.
I began to work with Professor Bill Sonnenstahl in my sophomore year and I worked with him through my senior year. I've been doing research with him on alcohol and drug interventions, specifically on college campuses and also writing papers. My research evolved into my Senior Honors Thesis. The research scholarship has allowed me to do fully funded research — do research over the summer, half in Ithaca and half in Washington, D.C. I would not have been able to do it without the Presidential Research Scholarship nor would I have had the incentive to do it. The defining experience for me at Cornell is my research through the Presidential Research Scholarship." Full Interview
-Galia Porat, ILR '05
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
"It's an economic paper — an assessment of the costs and benefits of minor league baseball in upstate New York communities. I took a look at Auburn and Batavia — two communities with Single A, New York - Penn League franchises.
What I tried to assess is — in the early 90s, major league baseball implemented Attachment 58, which forced cities or owners of stadiums to upgrade the facilities. For instance, in Auburn, the center field was actually below the level it should be — and these things need to be addressed. The question is — is it economically beneficial for the city to undertake these kinds of renovations — in lieu of spending money on other needs in the community.
I got to meet a lot of people — reporters from Auburn, Batavia, Syracuse. I got to meet a number of public officials who were very gracious and helpful by providing me with all kinds of data. I worked with Professor Bob Smith — he was my primary advisor and Professor Jim Gross was my second reader. And both of them, I believe, had conducted previous research on the New York Penn League.
I had never really done research before. This was a lot of fun. It was an Honor's Thesis. I had a chance to hang out — got to learn a lot about baseball — the business side of baseball. I'm a big baseball fan." Full Interview
-Daniel Schudroff, ILR '05
The Transformation of Public Assistance: Evaluating The Impact of Welfare Reform on Female Headed Households
That paper really grew out of a class that I took with Professor George Boyer that examined Social Welfare Policies in the United States and Great Britain. I took it in the spring of my junior year. I wrote a paper in that class about the socio-economic position of single mothers in American society and how they have held this very peculiar situation --- on one level — they're expected to work and support their families. And, on another level, they are expected to stay to stay home and read to their children. I looked at how the role of the poor single mother has evolved over time in this country — especially with regard to welfare reform. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 placed entirely new expectations on this particular demographic of people and had a giant impact on millions of working families and millions of children. We examined how this policy really influenced the lives of these working families.
I wrote a separate paper for Prof Boyer’s class on this topic and that's what sparked my interest in the topic. I am really grateful to him because I never would have thought that I could write a thesis on single-mother families in the economy until he told me — if you can write it for my class, you can make it into an honor's thesis. He definitely encouraged me and allowed me to see that I can think outside the box a little bit.
I like that about ILR — you can make the education what you want it to be. If you have a passion and if you have a strong interest, you can do it. A lot of people were surprised when I told them the topic of my thesis because — it wasn't about human resources— I didn't have to perform statistical regressions — but I took this thing that I was really interested in and that I thought was important and I made it work — I made it fit. That was a really good experience for me. Full Interview
-Genevieve Quist, ILR '05
