2023

Co-Authoring a Report on Child Care Sets Emma Eglinton ’23 Up for Grad School Success

Eglinton, who’s now studying education policy at the University of Pennsylvania, worked with Assistant Professor of Business Greg Collins on the report, which the state of Pennsylvania used to inform its decision to increase the subsidy rates paid to providers who participate in a program for low-income families.

By: Meghan Kita  Tuesday, July 25, 2023 02:09 PM

Emma Eglinton ’23

The story of how Emma Eglinton ’23, an international studies and economics double major and French & Francophone studies minor, came to co-author a recent report on child care in Pennsylvania begins with faculty connections — connections outside her direct fields of study.

She started by approaching Professor and Chair of Education John Ramsay. Eglinton had taken his first-year seminar and later served as a writing assistant for the same class: “I knew I wanted to work in education, but not necessarily in a teaching capacity,” she says. “I was interested in the economics and policy side of it. I reached out to ask about opportunities and careers in that world. He sent me Dr. Collins’ contact info.”

That’s Assistant Professor of Business Greg Collins, whose research interests center on education finance and policy. Collins had previously worked on Pennsylvania’s 2019 Child Care Market Rate Survey, conducted by the Institute of State and Regional Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg, and the survey was due for a follow-up in 2022. He invited Eglinton to join the team.

Eglinton, who is now studying education policy at the top-ranked University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, began working on the project last August. She focused specifically on the narrow cost analysis portion of the survey, which, “takes into account donated resources, volunteer time, the useful life of large durable assets, like playground equipment,” she says. “It’s trying to provide an estimate of how much all the resources would cost, regardless of how they were acquired.”

In addition to serving as co-author on the final report, Eglinton was able to sit in on the session in which the team presented their research to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL). The state government ultimately utilized the market rate survey to increase the subsidy rates paid to providers participating in Pennsylvania’s Child Care Works program, which enables low-income families to afford care.

“Throughout this process, I got an idea of what it looks like to be a researcher in education and how you can contribute to educational policy even if you’re not a politician or policy maker,” says Eglinton, who is currently working with Collins to develop further research questions based on the report’s findings; the proposal for one of their ideas was accepted for presentation at the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) Conference in November. “I knew that what we were doing was going to be useful [in determining the subsidy rates]. Even if the project felt like a lot of work, that made it feel super meaningful.”

Eglinton was also a student-athlete on the volleyball team, a peer tutor and a member of the Cardinal Key Club during her time at Muhlenberg. As a junior, she studied abroad in France, and as a senior, she participated in the Muhlenberg Integrative Learning Abroad (MILA) course Climate Change & Sustainable Development in Bangladesh.