Women in Legislative Studies Presentation

On Friday I was really honored to be featured on a professional development panel "Academic Entrepreneurship: Launching and Leading Centers, Labs, and Institutes" for Women in Legislative Studies. I as asked to speak about the Human Trafficking Research Lab and my experience starting a lab at a small liberal arts college. My lab was featured with the Director of the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy at Dartmouth College and the Director of the Hispanic Research Center at Arizona State University. It was great to share the space with these labs even though my experience of building a lab from scratch was very different from these established labs at major research institutions. 

Still, I was happy to share my experience, the HTRL manual, and the things I wish I would have known before building a lab. I wish I would have had more training on being a boss and accountability measures which I have learned but sometimes it has been challenging. I also wished I have taken a class on grants, fundraising, and budgeting. Also since we have been doing more consulting work lately to supplement the shrinking federal grant money for human trafficking I also had to learn to put in bids for research consulting. I learned this on the fly but I think in my first bid I wanted to get the contract so badly that I undervalued our work and the time it would take to complete the project. Giving this talk allowed me time to reflect on all of accomplishments in the lab with grants, publications, and our outreach work in the community. I also learned some more strategies for seeking funding, thinking about our mission, and reflecting on how the HTRL can align and better work with the goals of my institution and advancement. All in all it was a great opportunity to share my experience and I hope to see more political science labs related to legislative issues in the future!


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