CCPS Awards AU PhD Student Katherine Engel the Gill Family Foundation Scholarship

February 2023

We are pleased to congratulate Katherine Engel, doctoral candidate in AU’s Department of Public Administration and Policy, as this year’s winner of the Gill Family Foundation scholarship!

The Gill Scholarship supports dissertation work using quantitative methods in the areas of American Politics, Comparative Politics, Public Administration, or Policy Analysis at American University.

Katie is a PhD student in the Department of Public Administration & Policy. Her research interests include health equity and food policy. Prior to her doctoral studies, Katie worked as Director of Prospect Research at the University of Notre Dame. She also served as an AmeriCorps VISTA and worked on expanding SNAP use at farmers' markets. She holds an MS in Science, Technology & Public Policy from Rochester Institute of Technology and a BA in English from Pepperdine University.

The Gill Family Foundation was established in 1997 in Houston, Texas, to further the Gill family’s interest in support of educational philanthropy.  As a statement of philosophy, the Gill family has noted that “Education plays the critical role in providing opportunities for growth, development, success, lasting relationships and satisfaction in life.  We are committed to giving back to the system which provided us so much opportunity for success and financial independence.

The Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies would like to thank AU Professors Andrew Ballard, Liz Suhay, and Andrew Flores for serving on the selection committee for the Gill Scholarship.

CCPS’s Taylor-Fillmore project awarded $125,500 in grants

January 2023

The Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies recently won two grants totaling $125,500 to support the Correspondence of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore in 2023–24. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) awarded $115,000 as part of its grant program for Publishing Historical Records in Collaborative Digital Editions. The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation announced a $10,000 grant as part of its Humanities Program. Both are current sponsors, and we are grateful for their continued generosity. The Taylor-Fillmore project is preparing a print and digital edition of the 12th and 13th presidents’ letters from 1844–53. CCPS faculty fellow Michael David Cohen serves as editor; CCPS fellow Amy Larrabee Cotz, as associate editor. For more information, see the NHPRC’s press release and detailed listing of grant recipients.

Thurber Dialogues on Democracy

The Center for Congressional Presidential Studies is proud to announce, and very grateful to receive, a generous gift from Distinguished University Emeritus Professor Jim Thurber and his wife Claudia Thurber. Their gift will fund the Center’s Dialogues on Democracy (now the Thurber Dialogues on Democracy), an ongoing series of conversations with prominent thought leaders about how to strengthen democracy in the US and abroad. In 2021, their inaugural year, the Dialogues drew nearly 500 attendees per event, featuring Senator Cory Booker, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, author/journalist Anne Applebaum, and social scientists Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett. Thanks to the Thurbers’ benevolence, vision, and public-spiritedness, the Dialogues will now continue.

The inaugural Thurber Dialogue on Democracy of 2022 featured Rep. Adam Schiff for a conversation with Professor Jim Thurber on Thursday, March 31, 2022. This event, co-hosted by CCPS and KPU, was held via Zoom and the link to the recording of the event is available here.

The second Thurber Dialogue on Democracy featured Rep. Hakeem Jeffries for a conversation with Professor Liz Suhay on Tuesday, April 19^th at 7:00pm. This event, co-hosted by CCPS and KPU, was held via Zoom and the recording of the event is available here.

The third and final Thurber Dialogue of Democracy took place on Thursday, May 5^th at 6:00pm via Zoom and featured Harvard University political scientists Professor Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. They discussed their 2018 New York Times Best Seller, How Democracies Die, and broader themes of their work in recent events. This event was moderated by American University Professor Laura Paler.