ESP Biography



SOPHIE SHANK, Math teacher & former J-PAL staff




Major: Not available.

College/Employer: MIT

Year of Graduation: Not available.

Picture of Sophie Shank

Brief Biographical Sketch:

After working for J-PAL North America's Policy Team for 3 years, I am now in Harvard's Teacher Education Program studying to be a high school teacher. At J-PAL, I focused on health care delivery and education. Currently, I am student teaching Calculus and Geometry.

I'm really looking forward to HSSP this Spring!



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

S13732: Economics for Good: Applying Economics to Real-World Social Challenges in HSSP Spring 2020 (Feb. 29, 2020)
How can tools from economics help find solutions important problems related to poverty, inequality, health, climate change, and more? Founded by 2019 Nobel Laureates and MIT professors Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, J-PAL (the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT) works on reducing poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. J-PAL staff and J-PAL-affiliated professors will introduce tools and reasoning from economics and help you apply these tools to current events and public policy. Each week, you’ll learn a core concept or method in economics that can help you look at the world in a new way and/or explore an application of economics to an important topic. Topics will include health, education, climate change and environment, poverty and inequality, and policymaking. With the tools, skills, and case studies you’ll learn in this course, you’ll be just as enthusiastic as we are about using economics to develop and assess policies for a better world.