Advance, Cornell ILR School's publication for alumni and friends.
Issue link: https://advance.epubxp.com/i/362921
11 Employment and Disability Institute's global service learning program. The following fall, she spent a semester in the heart of the nation's disability policy com- munity — Washington, D.C. Through ILR's Credit Internship Program, Danso-Danquah served as a disability policy intern for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Educa- tion, Labor and Pensions. Danso-Danquah has blended her research interest – focused on the transition of young adults with disabilities into the work world – with participa- tion in campus groups such as the Cornell Union for Disabili- ties Awareness and the Cornell Disabilities Service Troop. "I feel," she said, "so blessed to have found my niche." undreds of thousands of pages from teacher contracts in New York state's 695 school districts have been sliced, diced and tabulated by ILR student researchers. Simon Boehme '14 is one of those researchers. For three years, he has been capturing data and coaxing it into standardized formats for the public's use. "I hope it contributes to a big- ger picture of information for decision makers in education, both at the state and local levels, to help them implement better policies," Boehme said. He also hopes unions, teach- ers, schools and the public beneft from information he helped gather for Bargaining for Better Schools, a project of the Scheinman Institute on Confict Resolution and the Worker Institute at Cornell. The project has issued reports on teacher salaries and the appeals process of the con- troversial teacher evaluation system adopted in 2012 by New York state. "A big reason why I am doing research is to share knowl- edge to create better policies that improve student out- comes in the state. I do not want my research to collect dust — I intend to make an impact with it," Boehme said. Boehme will parlay his re- search experience into a year of study in Ireland. Through a Mitchell Scholarship, he is pursuing a master's degree in mediation and confict inter- vention at National University Ireland, Maynooth. Boehme, who serves on the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, worked at the Grass- roots Research and Advocacy Movement in Mysore, India, through the ILR Global Service Learning Program during the summer of 2012. Last summer, he worked at the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa. Boehme is a former White House intern and in 2010, led his Kalamazoo, Mich., high school to win the frst White House Race to the Top Com- mencement Challenge. Data Impact Informing Education Policy H