Making policy work
October 22, 2026 (last updated on October 22, 2026)
MAPH alumna Carolyn Caine, AM’08, improves the programs that put policy into practice.
Like Adam Shapiro, AM’03, PhD’07, Carolyn Caine, AM’08, arrived at UChicago envisioning an academic career. But her time in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH) helped her see that “I’m not really a world of ideas person. I am a ‘What does it look like when we do things in the real world with other people?’ person,” she says. That realization eventually resulted in a career in policy.
Today, after a stint working in higher education accreditation, Caine works as an associate researcher at the University of Kansas Institute for Policy & Social Research. Much of her work focuses on program evaluation—a process undertaken to help principal investigators, government agencies, or other groups document outcomes from or improve their work.
How would you describe your current role?
A lot of what I do now is research and program evaluation. It’s policy-engaged work, because so much of it is about the implementation of very high-level policies. But I almost never think about it that way.
One of the projects I evaluate is a $20 million Nation Science Foundation–funded project around resilience and social equity in Kansas—so, thinking about hazards in the built environment and what kind of resources towns have to prepare for or mitigate damage. How do you decide what to do first after a tornado—get the electricity back on or get the water system safe? In that work, my job is really to listen to people and find out what opportunities there are for the project to function a little better.
A lot of the work is just showing up—attending team meetings, online and in person. And we interview and survey team members periodically to find out how things are going. What issues have emerged, and how have those been dealt with? How have people been able to build connections and relationships? What unanticipated opportunities have emerged?
What’s a project you especially enjoyed?
One of the projects I evaluate is called Rising Voices, Changing Coasts. You might be thinking, “Wait a second, Kansas is landlocked.” And you would be right!
Lawrence, Kansas, is home to Haskell Indian Nations University, which is a tribal university that accepts students who are enrolled members in federally recognized American Indian or Alaska Native tribes. Haskell got a $20 million NSF grant and is serving as a hub for leaders in four coastal areas: Alaska, Hawaii, the Louisiana Gulf, and Puerto Rico. The idea is to weave together Indigenous knowledges and Western science methods.
It’s been an incredible opportunity to get to know people from these places and to understand what climate change means for different communities. What does it look like for people to come together with remarkably different ways of thinking to address the challenges in front of them?
How has your humanities training helped in your work?
I do a lot of qualitative research, and a humanities background is a great fit for that, because you’re reading and understanding texts in different ways, looking across them to find patterns, and thinking about how people are making meaning of whatever it is you ask them to talk about.
As a full-time graduate student in the humanities, I learned a lot about being open to possibilities, cultivating curiosity, and being willing to work across disciplines and see things in a new way.