Alicia Kinne
A pursuit of passion in higher education
Interviewed by Vanessa Renée Casavant—April 10, 2009
Evans School student Alicia Kinne shares her thoughts on completing a degree project about finding sustainable funding for higher education, why she chose to pursue a Masters of Public Administration (MPA), and what she's learned about leadership through her studies at the Evans School.
You're currently in the midst of completing the degree project requirement for your MPA. What topic did you choose and why? I'm helping the University of Washington Office of Planning and Budgeting answer the question of whether or not it's possible to buffer higher education's budget from massive state cuts during economic downturns. The focus of my project is researching if there's a way to find sustainable funding for higher education in Washington state, and what the chances of success are in sending it as a ballot initiative to the voters or through the legislature.
That's quite a hefty piece to take on, especially right now. When did you start working on it? I took on the project in October, so before we even knew about the state deficit. It was kind of forward looking, and low and behold it's even more urgent and challenging than it was when I took on the project.
Your degree project wasn't actually due until after the budget passed, right? Right. We actually think this is something they might take on next session, in deciding what sort of ballot initiative they want to send to the voters and what it will look like. So the work that I do will hopefully lead to a piece of legislation in the 2010 session that will possibly go to voters in 2011.
This isn't the first time during your Evans School studies that you've worked with Olympia. You completed an internship last summer with the Washington State Senate Committee. What did your internship entail? I was working for the senate at large, and specifically the Committee on Labor, Commerce, Research, and Development. So senators from both sides of the aisle would come to me and say, "I'm interested in this topic. What can you tell me about it?" We would do the background research and then they would tell us, "OK. I'd like to create a bill that does this." And we'd write the bill for them. It was really interesting because then you'd have a senator from the other side say, "So, I hear this senator is trying to do this. Can you write a bill to oppose that?" So you'd write both sides of the argument. I really enjoyed that.
Do you want to continue doing this work after you receive your MPA degree from the Evans School? Absolutely. I love it. Unfortunately, this isn't the ideal time to be looking for a job in state government, so I've been looking at the federal level. I'm interested in general policy research, but my real passion is where higher education and state government intersect.
Where did your passion for this topic come from? My sophomore year at Eastern Washington University I was elected to student government, and I essentially served as the student lobbyist. So I got to spend quite a bit of time down in Olympia talking about what Eastern adds to the State of Washington and why supporting our students was so important. From there I served two years as student body president, and I just fell in love with public service and developed a passion for higher education.
What made you choose to get an MPA? I looked into both schools of education policy and public affairs, and the Evans School really was the perfect fit for me because of my general interest in policy. As much as I care about education, I think it's important to see the broader picture and how education fits into society as a whole. I liked the Evans School curriculum, and I also really liked the ability to craft a curriculum that would mean something to me and be very personalized.
So I heard, and I could have heard wrong, that one of your life's goals is to be the governor of Washington state. Is this true? No, actually. One of my life's goals is to be president of a university. Governor would be OK, [laughs] but I'd like to work in higher education more.
You already serve in a leadership role as the house director for the Alpha Xi Delta Nu Chapter here at the University of Washington. How did you get involved with the sorority and what role does the house director serve in it? I was a member of the sorority as an undergraduate, and last year I served as the public relations advisor to a couple of the girls. Then they asked me to serve as house director this year, so I live in with 60 undergraduate women and also manage an additional property of 25 doing everything from mentoring to changing light bulbs to managing the cooking staff. [laughs] They always say when you join a sorority that it's a lifelong commitment, and I think I'm really living that so far.
What part of the Evans School curriculum has changed you the most in the way you think about leadership? I think the core classes of public management and policy analysis. As much as I enjoyed my classes that were specifically focused on my area of interest, I found it was really enjoyable for me to just sit back and listen to what all of my peers had to say in the core classes. One of the disadvantages I had, perhaps, was that I came straight from my undergrad. So I've got some great experience, but it's very focused and a lot of our students have done just incredible things. To listen to what they've done and their experiences has taught me a lot.
How prepared do you feel for life after graduation? I feel very prepared, and very excited to get out there and use all of these skills I've already put into practice between my internship, my degree project, and even the Evans School course work, which includes a lot of projects that are relevant right now.