Roberts Fellowship

Building Evidence on the Teacher Workforce

This award supports Andrew's research on the teacher pipeline, including his dissertation work on how state policies shape teacher preparation, certification, and retention in Texas. It will also help him launch a new project on international teachers, a small but rapidly growing part of the U.S. teacher workforce. While districts across the country turn to visa programs to fill persistent vacancies in high-needs subjects, little is known about who these teachers are, where they end up teaching, and how their students fare. Drawing on administrative data, Andrew's project will build some of the first large-scale evidence on how international teachers are recruited and used, and what their growing presence means for students, schools, and the broader teacher labor market.

Noncitizen Voting Rights: Enfranchisement, Turnout, and Vote Choice

Paradoxically, democracies have been extending suffrage for noncitizens in recent decades at the local level—a time period of mass migration and rise in xenophobia. Globally, about 50 countries permit noncitizen residents to vote in some or all levels of government, and 26 of those countries permit noncitizens to vote in all local municipalities. Despite these efforts of inclusion for noncitizens, they remain the second largest group excluded from voting (the first being children). In my dissertation, I aim to answer three research questions across three interrelated papers: (1) under what conditions do political parties enfranchise noncitizens, (2) once provided with voting rights, how and when do noncitizens utilize this right to turn out to vote, and (3) which parties and candidates do noncitizens vote for? I study these questions across advanced democracies, including Europe and the United States, with a regional focus in Scandinavia for the case analyses.

Cleaning Up Colorado: The Cold War Fight Over Environmental Protection versus Economic Growth

The Cold War resulted in the mass, irreversible contamination of the Denver area in Colorado. Two weapons production plants, Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Rocky Flats, on the outskirts of the city, helped to prepare the US first for World War II, and later for the seemingly imminent threat of nuclear warfare. Both production facilities closed before the start of the twenty-first century and reopened as National Wildlife Refuges in the early 2000s. But their polluted pasts will continue to shape the landscape for at least thousands of years.

The federal government selected the Denver area for these military production facilities because of the climate, access to a large workforce, and proximity to the majority of federally owned public land in the West. My dissertation will examine the politics of growth in Denver alongside the environmental movement and the fight against pollution from Cold War weapons production facilities in the region. I plan to argue that the end of the Cold War, not activism, led to the closure of both plants. However, environmental groups' efforts to preserve more open space led the federal government to convert both landscapes into National Wildlife Refuges —an attempt to hide the pollution created by Cold War weapons production.

Rematriating Foodways: Mitigating Food Insecurity and Enhancing Tribal Economies through Traditional Food Systems

American Indians are twice as likely as the national average to be food insecure. Understanding this epidemic must begin with the role of government in Federal Indian Policies of removal, relocation, termination, and rations/annuities/commodities that severed ancestral food systems. While Kelly’s dissertation focuses on returning cultural foodways through Tribal sovereignty, she maintains impartiality to recognize the right to food as a basic human right for all. Looking to the prayers of her ancestor’s that negotiated traditional foods into Tribal treaties, Kelly holds a responsibility to carry these prayers forward to combat one of the greatest problems of our time: hunger in Indian Country.

The Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) is the only federal nutrition assistance program serving income-eligible households living on or near reservations. FDPIR is also the only one of sixteen USDA-FNA programs that treat SNAP (“food stamps”) as a substitute, rather than a supplement through its prohibition on dual participation. Nevertheless, the survivance (Vizenor, 1994) of Tribal Nations shines through the FDPIR Self-Determination Demonstration Project (FDPIR-638). FDPIR-638 expands authorities of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDEAA) to allow the Secretary of Agriculture to enter into contracts with Tribes to administer and procure traditional foods for FDPIR.

FDPIR-638 provides an exemplary illustration of how federal nutrition assistance programs can engage more direct participation in our food systems and enhance tribal autonomy, by honoring ancestral lifeways, restoring cultural foodways, and expanding governance structures. However, the future of Tribal self-determination in agriculture remains uncertain as FDPIR-638 currently operates as a pilot, lacking permanent expansion of ISDEAA into the USDA. Overall, her dissertation seeks to enhance the public’s understanding of Tribal nutrition assistance, strengthen society’s effective participation in our foodscape, and develop informed governance frameworks to combat hunger in Indian Country.

Social Determinants of Health and Inclusion Among Refugees with Disabilities in the United States

This community-engaged study examines how U.S. immigration, refugee resettlement, healthcare, and disability-service systems shape the health, well-being, and inclusion of refugees with disabilities. Drawing on interviews with 41 refugees with disabilities across 11 states, interviews with 26 service providers, and three focus groups, the study identifies structural barriers related to service coordination, communication access, employment, and implementation of disability protections. Guided by a Community Advisory Board of refugees with disabilities, attorneys, and service providers, the project centers lived experience in identifying actionable solutions. Fellowship support will translate findings into accessible policy briefs, community workshops, conference presentations, and open-access publications to strengthen institutional accountability and advance equitable access to health, employment, and community participation.

Beyond Tariffs: How U.S. Trade Protection Reshapes Market Competition and Industry Evolution

The American economic system is built on the principle of open-market competition, yet federal law also gives domestic industries legal avenues to request protection from global rivals. My project investigates the unintended costs that arise when these two realities collide.

One part of my work examines antidumping petitions, the main way U.S. industries request tariffs on cheap imports. Making a case often requires competitors to cooperate and share proprietary information — conduct that would normally draw antitrust scrutiny, but that the petition process has made routine. I study whether and how this process changes the way domestic firms compete. Using a dataset of 47 years of petitions matched to product prices, I find that jointly filed petitions raise prices even when the duty is denied, evidence that the process itself, not the tariff, softens competition. The second part of my work asks how protectionism has historically shaped U.S. industries: whether the short-term relief of tariffs comes at the expense of the harder investments such as automation and innovation that would keep an industry globally competitive. Taken together, these two lines of work reveal a paradox: policies designed to protect American industry may quietly erode the competition that keeps it strong.