Laura Tach
Laura Tach, associate professor of policy analysis and management and co-director of Cornell Project 2Gen, received the Evalyn Edwards Milman BCTR Faculty Fellowship this fall.
The fellowship program brings a faculty member from the College of Human Ecology into the orbit of the BCTR to help build stronger connections between research and the BCTR’s efforts to enhance human development. Tach will hold the role through June 2021.
The grant will fund two pilot studies and a graduate research assistant to help launch Tach’s work. Her research focuses on poverty and social policy. As co-director of Cornell Project 2Gen, Tach is helping to make connections between researchers and policymakers that help to supports vulnerable caregivers and children together.
“It is a great honor to receive the Milman Fellowship,” Tach said. “This fellowship will allow me to conduct research on social policies designed to support disadvantaged children and their families. This year, I will be studying place-based policies that aim to improve opportunities for children in disadvantaged communities, especially places afflicted by economic hardships and the opioid epidemic.”
Tach is receiving the award, explained BCTR Director Christopher Wildeman, because her work so closely aligns with the BCTR and the Milman’s mission.
“The work that Laura is planning during these two years is something that all of us should be proud of,” he said. “It exemplifies the finest social scientific work that we have in the university—and the bent on not just identifying social problems but also resolving them is a core component both of what we do in the BCTR and what Evalyn Milman intended with her incredibly generous gift.”
Tach received her doctorate degree in sociology and social policy from Harvard University in 2010. Prior to Cornell, she was Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.
