Today, the Batten School’s Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL), announced its first round of grant recipients. The Center, which launched in 2017, is a joint partnership between the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and Vanderbilt University and is co-directed by Batten professor, Craig Volden and Vanderbilt professor, Alan E. Wiseman.

A nascent organization, CEL’s funding and support for research grants is consistent with its commitment to advancing the generation, communication, and use of new knowledge about the effectiveness of individual lawmakers and legislative institutions in Congress. A defining feature of the Center is its emphasis that research and understanding will yield new opportunities to improve lawmaking effectiveness.

This year’s recipients are: Hanna K. Brant (University of Missouri); Andrew Clarke (Lafayette College); Jesse M. Crosson (University of Michigan); Alexander D. Furnas (University of Michigan); Tim LaPira (James Madison University); Geoff Lorenz (University of Nebraska at Lincoln); Daniel Markovits (Lafayette College); Melinda N. Ritchie (University of California at Riverside; Jennifer L. Selin (University of Missouri); Danielle Thompson (University of California at Irvine); Sarah Truel (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); and Hye Young You (New York University).

Research topics range from electoral payoff to gender equity to spatial location and viability and reflect the Center’s commitment to better understanding what impedes effective lawmaking and how that might be improved.  

Many grant recipients are faculty affiliates of the Center for Effective Lawmaking. Benefits of being a faculty affiliate include access to Center events, which include the Center’s annual research conference and various research and engagement opportunities; access to Center resources, such as inclusion in CEL’s working paper series and the opportunity to apply for a small grant competition.

The duties of the faculty affiliate are to promote the work and mission of the Center, as well as to contribute at least one Center-specific research or engagement product on an annual basis. For some affiliates, that would be a working paper included in CEL’s working paper series; for others, it might involve an op-ed, conference paper, blog posts, all of which acknowledge and build upon the work of the Center.

Information about them can be found on the Center’s website, www.thelawmakers.org.