Elisabeth Theresa Lembo is a first-year CIPA Fellow (’20) from New Jersey concentrating in Public and Nonprofit Management. Prior to CIPA, Elisabeth taught second grade in the Mississippi Delta and in Harlem, New York. She also has experience working with the New York City Department of Education in the Office of Teacher Development, as well as for the Teach For America summer training institute for new teachers in Mississippi. Elisabeth is interested in programs and policies aimed at enhancing educational attainment and extracurricular opportunities for students living in rural regions across the US. She is a 2014 graduate of Georgetown University where she studied government and art history.
This blog post is part 1 of a 3-part series, read part 2 here.
Hurricanes Irma and Maria of 2017 were tremendous natural and national disasters with devastation that is still visible today – particularly in the unincorporated U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. While the media displayed the damage to personal homes and food supplies, something that I personally did not think about were the devastating effects to Puerto Rican schools. The 2019 CIPA Infrastructure Practicum will seek to learn about the current state of broadband Internet in Puerto Rico and construct a two-fold product that will support schools in their role as “anchor institutions.”
I came to CIPA with a background in education, and when I learned that this trip involved learning from the Puerto Rican Department of Education (PRDE), I knew this would be an opportunity I wouldn’t want to miss. In just a few days from today, I’ll be meeting up in San Juan with 12 CIPA peers and our Professor John Foote to begin the CIPA Winter Practicum.
Our team represents a diverse group of students from various concentrations who are all getting an MPA, and even with students in other graduate degree programs including City and Regional Planning. During our week in Puerto Rico, we are focusing on both in-school broadband infrastructure and schools as anchor institutions. Our goal is two-fold:
One thing I appreciate most about our Infrastructure Winter Practicum is the thorough preparation we as a group have done beforehand to ensure that we are arriving to San Juan with amble background knowledge of this topic.
Here are some things we’ve done to prepare:
I feel confident that we are arriving to San Juan this Winter with a firm base understanding of the issue, a plan for who we will connect with, and a huge willingness to learn as much as we can throughout our week in order to provide the most robust assessment protocol and policy roadmap possible.
That’s it for now!
I’ll write again soon with a final post on our project outcomes. In the meantime, feel free to reach out to me with any questions for myself or our team: etl45@cornell.edu. If you have questions about attending Cornell University's Institute for Public Affairs, we encourage you to request more information today!