About News Batten's Lipscomb Receives UVA's Prestigious Public Impact-Focused Research Award Jan 31, 2022 Meredith Cole Batten's Lipscomb Receives UVA's Prestigious Public Impact-Focused Research Award Batten professor Molly Lipscomb received the Public Impact-Focused Research Award for her work looking at the impact of bringing public services to low-income households in countries where services are needed.Molly Lipscomb, a professor at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and Director of Social Innovation @ UVA, was honored by UVA for her outstanding research and scholarly activities. The University of Virginia on Friday honored faculty members across Grounds at the third annual Research Achievement Awards. Batten professors Jay Shimshack, Justin Kirkland, Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin Converse and Daphna Bassok were also honored for their work during the virtual award ceremony. “We are delighted to honor a strong and diverse cohort of faculty this year whose achievements in basic and public-impact-focused research, mentorship, collaboration and more reflect our core values as a research institution,” Melur “Ram” Ramasubramanian, vice president for research, said. “Our award-winning faculty pursue groundbreaking, creative and inspiring research in areas that range from nanocrystals to international law to muscle signaling,” Provost Liz Magill said. “The strength and impact of their ideas are a hallmark of the University’s research enterprise, and we are proud to honor their achievements.” “This year’s research award winners have made discoveries and generated knowledge that will have lasting impact on multiple fields, disciplines, and sectors, from the arts and sciences to health care and business. I’m grateful for their efforts and excited about the future of research at UVA,” President Jim Ryan said. Watch this video on the winners to learn more about their research. Public Impact-Focused Research Award Molly Lipscomb, Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy Molly Lipscomb’s work looks at the impact of, and strategies for, bringing public services, such as electricity and sanitation, to low-income households in countries where these services are needed, including Brazil, Senegal and Burkina Faso. Much of her work is about finding creative ways that access can be improved around the margins when the government can’t afford network-level expansions to infrastructure. “Lipscomb’s focus on building strong partnerships with organizations outside of higher education is both unique and useful, and it collapses the boundaries between academia and the real world in a productive way,” Ian Solomon, dean of the Batten School and a professor of practice of public policy, said. Read Full Story in UVA Today Molly Lipscomb Molly Lipscomb is an associate professor of public policy and economics at the Batten School and the Director of the Center for Social Innovation at the University of Virginia. Lipscomb’s research focuses primarily on environmental issues in developing countries and adaptation to lack of centralized health and sanitation services. Read full bio Jay Shimshack Jay Shimshack is a professor of public policy and economics as well as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Shimshack's research focuses on environmental regulation, environmental economics, corporate social behavior, and applied microeconomics for public policy. Read full bio Justin H. Kirkland Justin H. Kirkland is an associate professor of politics and public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. His research focuses on understanding the relationship between public opinion and legislative behavior, institutional rules and legislative outcomes, and methods for analyzing legislative choices. Read full bio Gabrielle Adams Gabrielle Adams is an associate professor of public policy and business administration at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and in the Darden School of Business’s Leadership and Organizational Behavior area. Adams studies the processes and dynamics that give rise to ‘good’ decisions, policies and conditions in organizations. Read full bio Benjamin Converse Benjamin Converse is an associate professor of public policy and psychology at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Department of Psychology. His research focuses on motivation, social judgment, problem solving and decision making. He teaches courses related to leadership and negotiations. Read full bio Daphna Bassok Daphna Bassok is the Batten Bicentennial Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Virginia and associate director of EdPolicyWorks, a collaboration between the School of Education and Human Development and the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Her research focuses on early childhood education policy and efforts to improve early childhood education at scale, particularly policies aimed at supporting the early childhood education workforce. Read full bio Related Content Molly Lipscomb Decentralization and Pollution Spillovers: Evidence from the Re-Drawing of County Borders in Brazil Research Service Reform and Manufacturing Performance: Evidence from India Research Batten Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Teaching, Service, Research and Engagement News This academic year, Batten School professors won a slew of internal and external recognitions for excellence in teaching, service, research and engagement. Faculty Spotlight: The Social Innovator News Batten professor Molly Lipscomb has a creative solution to a public sanitation crisis—and a new vision for the center that’s helping to address it. Jay Shimshack Disparities in PM2.5 air pollution in the United States Research Particulate air pollution in the contiguous United States has decreased considerably over recent decades, but where exactly has that progress been made? Batten's Jay Shimshack and his co-authors dive in. Costly Sanctions and the Treatment of Frequent Violators in Regulatory Settings Research Regulators typically treat frequent violators more harshly. When does such harsh treatment maximize overall compliance? Batten Showcase 2022: Environmental Inequality and Public Policy ft. Jay Shimshack News In this lecture, associate dean for academic affairs and professor of public policy and economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, Jay Shimshack, probes the concept of environmental inequality - how it both shapes and is shaped by public policy. Batten Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Teaching, Service, Research and Engagement News This academic year, Batten School professors won a slew of internal and external recognitions for excellence in teaching, service, research and engagement. Justin H. Kirkland Gabrielle Adams The “Equal-Opportunity Jerk” Defense: Rudeness Can Obfuscate Gender Bias Research In this research, we identified a barrier that makes sexism hard to recognize: rudeness toward men. We found that observers judge a sexist perpetrator as less sexist if he is rude toward men. Anger Damns the Innocent Research False accusations permeate social life—from the mundane blaming of other people to more serious accusations of infidelity and workplace wrongdoing. Importantly, false accusations can have grave consequences, including broken relationships, job loss, and reputational damage. In this article, we document an equally pernicious phenomenon—the misuse of anger as a cue to predict whether a suspect has been falsely accused. Batten Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Teaching, Service, Research and Engagement News This academic year, Batten School professors won a slew of internal and external recognitions for excellence in teaching, service, research and engagement. Faculty Spotlight: Gabrielle Adams’ Work Represents ‘the Best of What We Do at Batten’ News Batten Professor Gabe Adams, whose latest research examines how sexism can be overlooked in the workplace, is the recipient of a 2022 Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Jefferson Scholars Foundation. Benjamin Converse People systematically overlook subtractive changes Research A series of problem-solving experiments reveal that people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient. Next Week, Next Month, Next Year: How Perceived Temporal Boundaries Affect Initiation Expectations Research To move from commitment to action, planners must think about the future and decide when to initiate. We demonstrate that planners prefer to initiate on upcoming days that immediately follow a temporal boundary. We instinctively add on new features and fixes. Why don’t we subtract instead? News Across a series of studies published this month in the journal Nature, Batten’s Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin Converse and co-authors demonstrated that people tend to overlook the option to subtract parts when asked to change or improve something. In an op-ed for The Washington Post, they explore why ‘less is more’ is a hard insight to act on. Why People Forget that Less is Often More News Why, when solving problems, do people prefer adding things to getting rid of them? In an article for The Economist, Batten’s Gabrielle Adams and Benjamin Converse explain their research on subtractive improvements. Daphna Bassok Hard-to-staff centers: Exploring center-level variation in the persistence of child care teacher turnover Research High rates of teacher turnover in child care settings have negative implications for young children's learning experiences and for efforts to improve child care quality. Prior research has explored the prevalence and predictors of turnover at the individual teacher level, but less is known about turnover at the center level––specifically, how turnover varies across child care centers or whether staffing challenges persist year after year for some centers. This study tracks annual turnover rates for all publicly funded child care centers that were continuously operating in Louisiana from the 2015-16 to 2018-19 school years. Measuring the Quality of Teacher-Child Interactions at Scale: The Implications of Using Local Practitioners to Conduct Classroom Observations Research Batten Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Teaching, Service, Research and Engagement News This academic year, Batten School professors won a slew of internal and external recognitions for excellence in teaching, service, research and engagement. Small Students, Big Opportunities News Working in partnership with policymakers, Professor Daphna Bassok aims to provide long-term solutions to real-world problems for America's youngest learners. Stay Up To Date with the Latest Batten News and Events Subscribe
Molly Lipscomb Molly Lipscomb is an associate professor of public policy and economics at the Batten School and the Director of the Center for Social Innovation at the University of Virginia. Lipscomb’s research focuses primarily on environmental issues in developing countries and adaptation to lack of centralized health and sanitation services. Read full bio
Jay Shimshack Jay Shimshack is a professor of public policy and economics as well as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Shimshack's research focuses on environmental regulation, environmental economics, corporate social behavior, and applied microeconomics for public policy. Read full bio
Justin H. Kirkland Justin H. Kirkland is an associate professor of politics and public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. His research focuses on understanding the relationship between public opinion and legislative behavior, institutional rules and legislative outcomes, and methods for analyzing legislative choices. Read full bio
Gabrielle Adams Gabrielle Adams is an associate professor of public policy and business administration at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and in the Darden School of Business’s Leadership and Organizational Behavior area. Adams studies the processes and dynamics that give rise to ‘good’ decisions, policies and conditions in organizations. Read full bio
Benjamin Converse Benjamin Converse is an associate professor of public policy and psychology at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Department of Psychology. His research focuses on motivation, social judgment, problem solving and decision making. He teaches courses related to leadership and negotiations. Read full bio
Daphna Bassok Daphna Bassok is the Batten Bicentennial Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Virginia and associate director of EdPolicyWorks, a collaboration between the School of Education and Human Development and the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Her research focuses on early childhood education policy and efforts to improve early childhood education at scale, particularly policies aimed at supporting the early childhood education workforce. Read full bio
Decentralization and Pollution Spillovers: Evidence from the Re-Drawing of County Borders in Brazil Research
Batten Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Teaching, Service, Research and Engagement News This academic year, Batten School professors won a slew of internal and external recognitions for excellence in teaching, service, research and engagement.
Faculty Spotlight: The Social Innovator News Batten professor Molly Lipscomb has a creative solution to a public sanitation crisis—and a new vision for the center that’s helping to address it.
Disparities in PM2.5 air pollution in the United States Research Particulate air pollution in the contiguous United States has decreased considerably over recent decades, but where exactly has that progress been made? Batten's Jay Shimshack and his co-authors dive in.
Costly Sanctions and the Treatment of Frequent Violators in Regulatory Settings Research Regulators typically treat frequent violators more harshly. When does such harsh treatment maximize overall compliance?
Batten Showcase 2022: Environmental Inequality and Public Policy ft. Jay Shimshack News In this lecture, associate dean for academic affairs and professor of public policy and economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, Jay Shimshack, probes the concept of environmental inequality - how it both shapes and is shaped by public policy.
Batten Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Teaching, Service, Research and Engagement News This academic year, Batten School professors won a slew of internal and external recognitions for excellence in teaching, service, research and engagement.
The “Equal-Opportunity Jerk” Defense: Rudeness Can Obfuscate Gender Bias Research In this research, we identified a barrier that makes sexism hard to recognize: rudeness toward men. We found that observers judge a sexist perpetrator as less sexist if he is rude toward men.
Anger Damns the Innocent Research False accusations permeate social life—from the mundane blaming of other people to more serious accusations of infidelity and workplace wrongdoing. Importantly, false accusations can have grave consequences, including broken relationships, job loss, and reputational damage. In this article, we document an equally pernicious phenomenon—the misuse of anger as a cue to predict whether a suspect has been falsely accused.
Batten Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Teaching, Service, Research and Engagement News This academic year, Batten School professors won a slew of internal and external recognitions for excellence in teaching, service, research and engagement.
Faculty Spotlight: Gabrielle Adams’ Work Represents ‘the Best of What We Do at Batten’ News Batten Professor Gabe Adams, whose latest research examines how sexism can be overlooked in the workplace, is the recipient of a 2022 Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Jefferson Scholars Foundation.
People systematically overlook subtractive changes Research A series of problem-solving experiments reveal that people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient.
Next Week, Next Month, Next Year: How Perceived Temporal Boundaries Affect Initiation Expectations Research To move from commitment to action, planners must think about the future and decide when to initiate. We demonstrate that planners prefer to initiate on upcoming days that immediately follow a temporal boundary.
We instinctively add on new features and fixes. Why don’t we subtract instead? News Across a series of studies published this month in the journal Nature, Batten’s Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin Converse and co-authors demonstrated that people tend to overlook the option to subtract parts when asked to change or improve something. In an op-ed for The Washington Post, they explore why ‘less is more’ is a hard insight to act on.
Why People Forget that Less is Often More News Why, when solving problems, do people prefer adding things to getting rid of them? In an article for The Economist, Batten’s Gabrielle Adams and Benjamin Converse explain their research on subtractive improvements.
Hard-to-staff centers: Exploring center-level variation in the persistence of child care teacher turnover Research High rates of teacher turnover in child care settings have negative implications for young children's learning experiences and for efforts to improve child care quality. Prior research has explored the prevalence and predictors of turnover at the individual teacher level, but less is known about turnover at the center level––specifically, how turnover varies across child care centers or whether staffing challenges persist year after year for some centers. This study tracks annual turnover rates for all publicly funded child care centers that were continuously operating in Louisiana from the 2015-16 to 2018-19 school years.
Measuring the Quality of Teacher-Child Interactions at Scale: The Implications of Using Local Practitioners to Conduct Classroom Observations Research
Batten Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Teaching, Service, Research and Engagement News This academic year, Batten School professors won a slew of internal and external recognitions for excellence in teaching, service, research and engagement.
Small Students, Big Opportunities News Working in partnership with policymakers, Professor Daphna Bassok aims to provide long-term solutions to real-world problems for America's youngest learners.