Brown Faculty Chairs Mix Work and Play

Lunch at the Viceroy

Happy Hour at the Loews Hotel

Lunch at M Street Kitchen

Photos courtesy of Lisa Meredith/Pardee RAND

April 25, 2017

As our two 2016-2017 Harold and Colene Brown Faculty Chairs (during the academic year), professors Lisa Meredith and John Davis engaged with students across a range of academic activities. They also organized happy hours, lunches, and even a bike ride with students.

Meredith visited in the fall term, October 17 through November 10. During her residency, Meredith met one-on-one with 23 students to discuss topics ranging from getting through the first year of the program, planning the dissertation, dry-running conference presentations, and even decompressing post-election. She also presented two seminars, one on dissertations and another on research experiments — including her own randomized trial of collaborative care for PTSD, and also socialized with students in two group lunches and two happy hours.

Meredith continues to be highly involved in the school as a member of the Faculty Committee on Curriculum and Appointments (FCCA), and is chair and member on two dissertation committees.

John Davis (seated) "talks shop" with student Pavan Katkar (cohort '14)

Photo by Diane Baldwin/RAND Corporation

Bike ride photos by student Stefan Zavislan (cohort '14)

Davis visited the Pardee RAND campus in the spring term, from April 2 through April 22. Among his many activities, he held a two-part workshop that explored the recent rise in cybersecurity incidents and their associated geopolitical implications — and noted the active student participation during both seminars.

But while his visit wasn't "all work," even recreational events ended up being educational as well. At a happy hour at Jimmy’s Famous American Tavern, Davis and students had an engaging discussion about AirBnB, the sharing economy, and the associated implications on public policy.

He also hosted a "first annual" bike ride down the Santa Monica/Venice beach bike trail, where he proved that even a leisurely bike ride can inspire policy discussions: Davis and the students stopped by a SnapChat kiosk to learn about SnapChat Spectacles, which of course led to a discussion about the product's privacy implications!

Our third Brown Faculty Chair, Christine Eibner, is the Paul O'Neill Alcoa Chair in Policy Analysis, a senior economist and an associate director of the Health Services Delivery Systems program at the RAND. She will be here July 5-28.