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Happy Monday, DMC friends and supporters! We are grateful for another week of progress and persistence at our center. Today's newsletter features an extensive view of our impact at and beyond the DMC.
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Former DMC Policy Analyst elected to State Legislature
Kaylee Tuck, a former social entrepreneurship student and employee of the DMC, was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in November. She will be representing her hometown district of Sebring, Florida as a Republican when session convenes in 2021.
Kaylee was one of Dr. Staley’s first social entrepreneurship students. During the class, she proposed an innovative, private sector approach to address poor migrant worker housing conditions. The quality of the project helped the center secure a $130,000 multi-year grant to continue working on the project with Kaylee as the project manager. She ultimately decided to pursue her law degree at Stetson University. Changes in federal immigration law led to the project ending earlier than hoped, but her project remains a testament to outside of the box thinking, innovation, and the core values of the DMC.
The project was inspired by her experiences living and working in rural Florida—the district she will now represent in the Florida Statehouse. At the DMC, we encourage our student interns to draw on their experiences to pursue their passions and interests, all while maintaining a commitment to our evidence-based philosophy.
Kaylee is one of many students, interns, and former staff who take her experience at the DMC to the next level. We look forward to supporting her career as a legislator.
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Staff Profile: Jacob Doty
This week, the DMC would like to highlight the dedication and innovation of Jacob Doty: a Masters student in Applied Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the GIS team lead at the DMC. Jacob works seamlessly at the nexus of public policy research and data analytics. He has high-level geospatial knowledge and analysis skills that have been instrumental in creating our growing property database for Leon County, FL. In addition to GIS, Jacob has been incorporating Python into his work for the DMC.
Geographic Information System (GIS) is a new data integration for the DMC. The initiative merges the skills of our policy and data analytics teams. The goal of the project is to compile a geospatial database for property value data by parcel over time to foster faculty and student research collaborations that examine Florida’s urban development process. With Jacob at the helm, the team has acquired parcel-level geographic data for Leon County from 2006-2019 and is actively cleaning and joining the shapefiles with tax roll data. We anticipate expanding this database to include other Florida counties.
Jacob is an avid harmonica and sports enthusiast and we are grateful to benefit from his intellect and work ethic. While we will be sad to see him graduate in the Spring, the faculty at the DMC has high hopes for Jacob’s professional future.
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Support Our Student Internship Program!
The DMC has made a name for itself through a robust and innovative internship program that now includes 30 undergraduate and graduate students in any given academic year. Our hands-on mentoring, immersive student education, applied policy research give them the tools to be successful when they graduate, whether they enter the professional workforce or go onto graduate school.
Please consider supporting this program, which is funded through private donations, by giving to the DeVoe L. Moore Center (Fund code FO4804 in the drop-down memo).
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Mary Lou Rajchel Appointed to Oversight Board
The DeVoe L. Moore Center is pleased to announce the appointment of Mary Lou Rajchel to the center’s Oversight Board. Mary Lou has played a prominent role in Tallahassee and the state of Florida’s public policy community.
An FSU law school graduate, she has served in a number of high profile and important roles, including as the long-time president and CEO of the Florida Trucking Association, Senior Vice President for Research and Development for Florida Taxwatch, President and CEO of the Florida Phosphate Council, Director of Cabinet Affairs for the Florida Department of Education, and Assistant General Counsel for the Florida Department of Commerce. Rajchel has been informally engaged with and been an advocate for the DeVoe Moore Center, its programs, and its students for many years.
Mary Lou’s experience, insight, and perspective will directly influence the center’s ability to achieve greater impact as an authoritative voice on public policy.
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Giving Tuesday Recap
This past Tuesday was #GivingTuesday, a national day in which the Tuesday after Thanksgiving many nonprofits seek donations as part of a global activism initiative. At the DMC we celebrate this day of nonprofit support because of how crucial the generosity of our affiliates is to our continued success. Our valued private supporters allow us to maintain our immersive student internship program and research opportunities.
Our internship program has cultivated many young ambitious students and sent them on paths to work at some of the most successful companies in the nation. These companies include IBM, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Ernst & Young, and the Charles Koch Foundation to name a few. Our program mentors as many as 30 students each year majoring in disciplines such as economics, finance, entrepreneurship, English, communications, and philosophy. Much of our funding base is sustainable through our private affiliates and we greatly appreciate the support they give.
We use these contributions to underwrite undergraduate student research, conference fees and presentations, and (in a non-Pandemic world) professional travel for students. Many of our undergraduates use the internship program here at the DMC as a launchpad towards graduate programs, if not at Florida State then schools such as Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and the University of Texas at Austin. Some have even earned Fulbright Fellowships.
We use events like #GivingTuesday as a way to broaden our independent private donor base and sustainably fund our programs while expanding opportunities for these students. Here’s the link to where you can find the DMC option at the FSU Foundation donation page using fund code F04804.
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Upcoming DMC Events
All DMC affiliates are welcome to attend any and all of our upcoming events.
- Filmmaking and Public Policy Symposium: Tuesday, February 9, 2021 (Miss Virginia)
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Miss Virginia is a 2019 film that sheds light on the perspective of an impoverished single mother who launches a grassroots campaign to secure a private school voucher program in Washington.
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