For Katharine Broton, making a profound and positive impact on the world wasn’t merely an unfulfilled cliche, but a career-guiding conviction.
Growing up in a family of educators in rural Wisconsin, Broton, associate professor in the Department of Higher Education and Student Affairs and researcher affiliate at the Center for Social Science Innovation (CSSI), always knew she wanted a meaningful career. However, K-12 teaching or other rewarding fields like healthcare, didn’t feel like the right fit for Broton.
So, she entered undergraduate at UW-Madison intending to pursue a business-related degree. During her first two years, she fell in love with the Afro-American studies and sociology courses she was taking for general education requirements. Soon after, she switched trajectories, eventually earning degrees in both fields.
After undergraduate, Broton, who was still set on making a difference, became an Americorps volunteer, working in middle and high schools with a high percentage of families with incomes under the poverty line. The role still didn’t fully satisfy Broton’s passion for change, so she shifted to a non-profit organization that specialized in research and evaluation.
There, Broton thrived, and realized she wanted to conduct research. Returning to UW-Madison, Broton earned a PhD in the sociology of education.
Unfulfilled basic needs in higher education
Now, an associate professor in the College of Education, Broton aims to make a difference by improving low- and moderate-income students’ access to and success in higher education.
This research began in Broton’s PhD years, where she became one of the first to formally document the widespread extent of student insecurity in higher education. At the time, due to a lack of data, there was considerable debate whether the problem even existed.
Broton’s data revealed the problem was real, as she discovered many students report unfulfilled basic needs, such as food, shelter, transportation, and childcare. For example, Broton found that approximately 45% of college students experience some form of housing insecurity.
After identifying the problem, Broton watched as colleges and universities across the country, including the University of Iowa, began offering basic needs resources and programs.
Broton now works to understand how students navigate these offerings to achieve academic and personal success.
For example, one common basic needs initiative is food vouchers. Broton discovered that students who used food vouchers were more likely to graduate than their otherwise similar peers, a finding which she is now working to understand the mechanisms behind.
Reshaping the foundational bricks of higher education
For Broton, eating low quality food or lacking money for rent are symptoms of the larger problem of college unaffordability. In the 20th century, colleges were funded primarily by state education funds, but now the burden has shifted to the students.
Broton is looking to address these challenges because higher education has a profound impact on people’s prosperity.
“Higher education is a transformational institution in our society,” Broton explains. “It continues to improve students’ and their children’s economic security, physical health, and wellbeing.”
Broton is currently studying how to tap into that transformative power on the University of Iowa’s campus, where she is collaborating with other researchers and organizations to identify solutions, such as the provision of basic needs resources, to the barriers surrounding higher education.
Broton cites CSSI as one of the “best outlets” on campus for sharing her research endeavors with the broader public. She has also consulted with Mike Oie, data analytics specialist, for computational advice and sent her grad students to CSSI’s methodological workshops.
Ultimately, what fuels Broton and her research success is truly making that profound and positive impact on the world – one in which she can see unfolding across campus.
“It’s been really great to be part of that project, to have so many invested campus partners working closely on the project. I know once we share results of what we’re doing, we will sit down with those campus partners again, we’ll say ‘This is what we found in the research. This is how we’re thinking about it. How are you thinking about it? Does that make sense from your perspective? And then how can we think about next steps together’,” Broton reflects on her most recent project.
“It’s been a really meaningful experience unlike any that I’ve been a part of.”
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