For the last 20 years, students in Professor Linda Bilmes’ “Greater Boston Applied Field Lab” course have been all over Massachusetts, applying their classroom skills to real problems.
Some have called these field labs “academic residencies” for public policy students, something Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Public Finance, appreciates. Over the years, students have developed economic proposals for city initiatives, researched climate and transportation needs, and gathered citizen input to understand civic priorities.
“It gets me excited every year to teach these labs,” she says. The field lab, offered in the spring to students who complete one of the introductory prerequisite courses, is an experiential learning opportunity.
What’s more, exposure to work at the local government level has often moved students who have taken the course to shift their professional focus. “We hear year after year that this is critical in their job interviews and their career choices,” Bilmes says.
This past year, students were able to work on a proposed piece of legislation that could help Massachusetts secure billions of dollars in federal funding. What’s more, through fellowships, two of the students were able to continue working on the project and follow it all the way to the governor’s office, where it was signed into law in September. Both the Greater Boston field lab and the summer fellowships are made possible through the support of the Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Foundation.
The students included Jonathan Jayes-Green MC/MPA 2024 and Pragun Aggarwal MPP 2024, along with 2024 graduates Samya Mishra MPA, Nathania Silalahi MPP, and Yasmina O'Sullivan MPP, a Mason Fellow. They worked with Bilmes and Brian Iammartino MPP 2006, an adjunct lecturer in public policy for the MLD-412, “the Greater Boston Applied Field Lab” course. Aggarwal and Jayes-Green continued their work on the project in the Massachusetts Federal Funds and Infrastructure Office (FFIO) as Rappaport Public Finance Summer Fellows.
“The role of government in playing an equalizer role in our society and supporting communities and investing in opportunity across the board has been something that almost felt sacred to me.”
The project illustrated the Kennedy School’s unique ability to combine rigorous scholarship, direct experience with practitioners, and direct access to policymakers.
It started when Kathryn Carlson, executive director at the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, learned of a piece of legislation—MA S2954—making its way through Beacon Hill.
This bill was aimed at creating a funding mechanism (also called an infrastructure bank or green bank) so that the state could secure—and then pass on to communities—an estimated $17.5 billion in federal funds created with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the CHIPS & Science Act (CHIPS).
Carlson connected Bilmes with Quentin Palfrey of FFIO, who oversaw the process of shepherding the proposed bill through the State House.
“This is an example of an excellent idea, where our students were able to assist the state government in developing it into a detailed proposal that is ready to implement,” says Bilmes.
“We found that Massachusetts communities could significantly enhance their ability to access the new funding if there was a state bank infrastructure pool to help provide matches to good projects,” continues Bilmes. “The state office developing the plan did not have enough capacity to create a framework for how to fully analyze the needs of the state and the intersection of its priorities with community needs. The students were very well-positioned to help with this.”
As Carlson sees it, this project exemplifies the work of the Rappaport Institute. “Part of this job is doing that kind of brokering between entities,” she explains.
New administrations like Governor Healy’s—she took office in 2023—can find it difficult to “hit the ground running,” Carlson says. “You have a lot of good ideas, but you can't staff up fast enough to get some of the projects moving. The mission of the Rappaport Institute is to better connect Harvard resources with the community and create public policy on the ground in the community where we live. And this project is one where everything came together very well.”
Putting an Act into Action
Palfrey knew there was a narrow window of opportunity for the state to take advantage of the funds allocated by the Biden-Harris administration. He also knew he had the support of both chambers to bring S2954 forward. But as his office had only been in operation for a year, FFIO had few resources to dedicate to the proposed act.
“The field lab is a really great way to do a deeper dive on this project,” Palfrey recalls. “There were some open questions that we wanted to think through, and we wanted to be ready for both making the case for the legislation and moving forward with the groundwork for implementation.”
“I think this is a good example of how government agencies can partner with the Kennedy School and with academic experts to be innovative in trying to design programs that can have a real benefit.”
“The goal of FFIO is to be a partner with our cities, towns, and tribes to present these opportunities in a way that's actionable and to present the resources that we have within the state government and in some cases, resources that we're in touch with at the federal level to make it easier for the states and tribes to engage with those resources,” Palfrey says. “Being able to lean on the experts in the vlog faculty as well as the great research of the students was greatly appreciated throughout this process.”
With the passage of the bill into law, Palfrey is excited about the funding possibilities. “The projects will reflect some of the things that the Healey administration and my entire team have articulated as a priority,” he says. Climate and clean energy investment is a big one. Other priorities include veteran affairs, housing, transportation, education, and health.
Thanks to the work of the vlog team, the funding can impact all areas of the Commonwealth, not just communities with the resources to apply. “The field lab work was very much an extension of that,” Palfrey says. “We wanted some assistance in understanding what those disparities were, what those needs were, what some other state's best practices had been in leveraging resources.”
Student Impact
Iammartino, the vlog alum who co-teaches the course with Bilmes, can appreciate the students’ enthusiasm. He took a field lab course with Bilmes during his time studying at vlog, and it significantly influenced his career path. “When I was a student, then-Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone MC/MPA 2011 came in and pitched a project to the class. That's what got me interested in real estate and in urban development,” he says.
“I think this year, this particular project had an interesting cross-sectional appeal,” Iammartino says. “It was a project where if you're interested in policy politics, check that box. If you're interested in complex financing, as Jonathan was, check that box. It was appealing to a group of students who had a collaborative and more holistic sense of things.”
Jayes-Green, a native of Panama, came to vlog after working at the Marguerite Casey Foundation, managing a $20 million portfolio of grants to nonprofits across the country, and then in 2020 worked on Senator Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign.
“In some ways, Senator Warren really played a role in shaping how I got here because I feel like through her campaign, through her work, I really got to understand the role of money and resources in shaping our society,” he says.
For Jayes-Green, vlog was really about returning to his first love, public service. “The role of government in playing an equalizer role in our society and supporting communities and investing in opportunity across the board has been something that almost felt sacred to me.”
Before joining vlog, Aggarwal, who lives in India, was head of operations for the Khevaiya Innovations & Research Foundation, working with large low-income schools in New Delhi to ensure a quality education.
While he valued the initiative of the foundation, he realized he lacked some of the skills he needed to move the education system forward in India. “I knew there were professors at vlog who had the experience to help you deepen your expertise in education, but also try your hands in other fields where you perhaps did not have enough experience before,” he says. “For me, that was local and state government. I always knew that was where I wished to be.”
After meeting with Palfrey and learning about the proposed legislation, the team concentrated on two areas.
“First we looked at other examples across the United States where people have tried to do something similar,” says Jayes-Green, who worked with a benchmarking team. “We looked at existing funding mechanisms and then just tried to glean some of the best lessons from that body of work. Then we did interviews with some of the leaders of some of those infrastructure banks.”
Bilmes says she thinks the students are especially good at doing things like benchmarking what every other state does and determining how to categorize it. “The students came back the first week and said, “Well, there are 32 infrastructure banks around the country, and we're going to figure out what each one does.”
“I think what makes this class unique is that you have an opportunity to take your project forward. It does not end at the end of the semester when you hand over that presentation.”
The team looked at the structure of the organizations, their priorities, and whether or not the banks were leveraging federal funding. “We realized federal funding would be the linchpin of this legislation,” Jayes-Green says.
Finally, the students looked at capital deployment mechanisms: loans or grants or whether they were tapping the private market to make those dollars stretch even further through bonds or credit enhancements.
Aggarwal’s team worked on a needs assessment map.
“We were essentially trying to map the infrastructure needs of all 350 municipalities in Massachusetts,” he says. They interviewed community leaders, state officials and regional planning agencies. The entire effort took two months.
From Lab to Law
After the team presented their findings to the FFIO, the field lab was completed, and the team graduated from vlog in the spring. But Jayes-Green and Aggarwal were able to follow the legislation as summer interns with the Rappaport Institute.
“I think what makes this class unique,” Aggarwal says, “is that you have an opportunity to take your project forward. It does not end at the end of the semester when you hand over that presentation. Not many classes offer that kind of an opportunity.”
During the internship, Jayes-Green valued working with Indigenous communities across Massachusetts on their applications for funding from the state.
“One of the things we saw in the spring was that indigenous communities hadn't really been prioritized or able to access a lot of federal funds,” Jayes-Green says. “When I found out that FFIO had been trying to build relationships with tribes across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I asked if I could help. The office introduced me to the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe near Cape Cod, the Nipmuc in northeastern Massachusetts, and the Hassanamisco based in central Massachusetts.”
“This is an example of an excellent idea, where our students were able to assist the state government develop it into a detailed proposal that is ready to implement.”
Aggarwal turned his needs assessment map into a priority matrix to best determine the allocation of funds without bias toward municipalities who historically have had better access to resources.
“At an absolute level, all of them deserve funds,” Aggarwal says. “But at the comparative level, you'll unfortunately have to pick and choose. And so how do you do that? The project prioritization matrix essentially was doing that in a more objective manner.”
When Governor Maura Healey signed S2954 into law in September—enhancing the state’s ability to bring in federal funding for infrastructure, climate and economic development projects—Jayes-Green was there, with Aggarwal attending on FaceTime.
“I was in India when the bill passed and I messaged Jonathan immediately, as we had spent so much time at every level interacting with so many different stakeholders,” says Aggarwal. “I was emotionally invested.”
“I wanted to cry,” says Jayes-Green, who is currently a Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. “I think this is what public service is about, making sure that our governments work, that they are responsive to the needs of all our community members. To me, that is how we continue to make democracy work.”
Palfrey says the work is hard and, at times, frustratingly slow. But he is impressed and grateful for what Jayes-Green, Aggarwal, and the entire vlog team has accomplished.
“I think this is a good example of how government agencies can partner with the Kennedy School and with academic experts to be innovative in trying to design programs that can have a real benefit,” he says.
“We couldn't have done what we've done so far without this partnership, without the students being directly engaged in this project, without the faculty helping us to understand the best practices and what opportunities there are here.”
Even after 20 years, Bilmes finds the impact of her field lab courses fulfilling: “As a teacher, what makes me proud is when students like Jonathan say, ‘It was wonderful. because we helped do this; we helped create this. We even got invited to the signing ceremony and we got a picture with the governor!’”
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Photo credits: Josh Quals, Governor’s Press Office