Sarah Charnes

Sarah Charnes successfully defended her dissertation in Public Policy and Management in December 2021, and will be engaged in postdoctoral work as a National Poverty Fellow (through the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Research on Poverty) during the 2022-23 academic year (in residence in the Division of Data and Improvement at the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children & Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C.). Sarah served as a Lecturer/Instructor in the Evans School during the Winter and Spring Quarters of 2022.

Sarah began her Ph.D. studies in Public Policy and Management at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance after working for seven years as a macroeconomist in the Office of Economic Policy (Office of Macroeconomic Analysis) at the U.S. Department of the Treasury in Washington, D.C., a position she took after interning there during the junior year of her undergraduate studies. Sarah gained invaluable managerial experience during her time at the Treasury Department, which included periodically serving as the Acting Director for the Office of Macroeconomic Analysis. While at the Treasury Department, she obtained a Master of Arts in Applied Economics from Johns Hopkins University, with a concentration in quantitative methods and a certificate in forecasting practice. Sarah earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Truman State University, and studied abroad at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

As a former civil servant, Sarah is deeply committed to the training of future public servants. While pursuing her doctorate, Sarah served as a teaching assistant for six Evans School MPA courses (economics and quantitative methods), a guest lecturer or presenter in several Evans School MPA and Executive MPA courses, and a facilitator for pedagogical training sessions held by the UW's Center for Teaching and Learning. She received the Evans School MPA students' award for outstanding teaching assistance for the 2017-2018 academic year. In 2019, Sarah was a predoctoral instructor for the second of two first-year core courses in quantitative methods (multiple regression and causal inference) in the Evans School's MPA program.

As a doctoral student, Sarah worked as a research assistant for several quantitative and qualitative projects, and received a certificate from the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research at Syracuse University (Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs) in 2016. Sarah's doctoral work focused upon the intersection of social policy and food policy in the United States. Her dissertation investigated issues pertaining to food and nutrition assistance programs (including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), household food insecurity, work requirements, and vulnerable subpopulations. Sarah's dissertation work was supported in part by a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service and a dissertation fellowship from the UW's West Coast Poverty Center.