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| About Us
The Roosevelt Institution The Roosevelt Institution is a non-profit, non-partisan national network of campus-based student think tanks. Its members conduct policy research on the pressing political issues facing our world, from environmental protection to equality under the law to trade and taxes. The Roosevelt Institution connects the fruits of that research to the policy process, delivering sound, progressive proposals to policymakers and advocacy groups at all levels of government as it organizes, trains, and empowers the next generation of progressive leaders. The founders of the Roosevelt Institution conceived its model to train and empower students in the policymaking process and to affect real change in American politics. These founding members understood the need for a student voice in the policymaking process, from the genesis of ideas in academia to their implementation through local, state and national governments. Since its inception, the Roosevelt Institution has ballooned to almost 7,000 student members nationwide. Together, these students publish numerous policy and research journals, advance dozens of legislative goals, and hold countless meetings, panels and conferences every year. During the past three years, Roosevelt members have held meetings on Capitol Hill, testified to city councils, and reached out and worked directly in their communities. The model conceived by Roosevelt’s founding members has spawned an organization that is always growing, always evolving, and always looking towards the future. “The Roosevelt Challenges” Each summer, the national student membership of the Roosevelt Institution meets to select three pressing policy challenges. In the inaugural 2006-2007 school year, the student membership chose the Energy Challenge of reducing fossil fuel use, the Higher Education Challenge addressing the lack of socioeconomic diversity in higher education, and the Working Families Challenge aimed at the incompatibility of many jobs with a sustainable family life. Over the sixteen months following the challenge selection, students work to solve these three challenges through a series of research projects, conferences, publications, and presentations. As a first step, students in the Roosevelt Summer Research College prepare background research on the three new challenge areas. This research introduces students to the various dimensions of the problem, its sources, barriers to the implementation of currently proposed solutions, and promising approaches. In the Energy Challenge, for example, the background research described current and future trends in American and global fossil fuel use, the problems fossil fuel use creates, the breakdown of fossil fuel energy uses, and strategies for mitigation, conservation, and switching to renewable energy sources. The Summer Research College presents this research to the conference of chapter leaders in Hyde Park, NY at the end of the summer, allowing the leaders to plan their chapters’ response to the challenges in the coming year. During the fall, students use the Summer Research College background to find good ideas for solving a challenge. The search takes them to classes and extracurricular activities like the Stanford Green Dorm project, the Middlebury conference on green buildings, or the Yale Higher Education conference. Students hold hundreds of brainstorming meetings, like the one at the University of Georgia chapter to find ideas to relieve local poverty. The search takes Roosevelt members to the offices of state legislators and local experts. Last year, students involved with the Working Families challenge met with union officials, healthcare experts, New Orleans reconstruction planners, California state assembly members, and activists with the Moms Rising coalition. During the winter and spring, students come together for a series of regional policy conferences. Students present their proposed solutions, and those presentations are rated by a panel of policy experts, professors, and elected officials. As the spring comes to a close, Roosevelt’s editorial board collects the best ideas developed over the course of the year and publishes them in three issues, which together form the 25 Ideas volume. 25 Ideas is distributed through a variety of venues: in one-on-one meetings with state legislators and members of Congress, to advocacy groups, to Roosevelt’s advisors and donors, and to the chapters, which distribute to their partners and local representatives. The goal of Roosevelt publications is to spark new ideas, discussions, and legislative projects around the country as a result of student work. Over the summer, even as the Summer Research College prepares next year’s background research, promotion of the ideas continues with legislative meetings and presentations at Roosevelt’s annual Policy Expo in DC. Students also present longer, in-depth research in Roosevelt’s annual research journal, the Roosevelt Review, which is released at the end of the summer. "Roosevelt's Structure" Students have everything it takes to be a think tank. The Roosevelt Institution provides two levels of organizational infrastructure to make college students successful participants in the policy process. On a university campus, students gather to discuss and write on policy issues. These students are the nucleus of a Roosevelt chapter. These chapters gather interested students, recruit faculty and expert advisors, build student networks, and track influential outlets within that issue area. They guide the selection of pertinent research topics, and work to find an appropriate audience for the chapter’s work. The chapter may start a publication, a specialized journal, or meet with a staff member in a state or federal policymaker’s office. Roosevelt encourages its student members to make their class work more relevant to real-world policy and to undertake extracurricular research projects that make use of the resources available to them on campus. Within the chapter, an administrative team works closely with the policy centers to coordinate events, provide design and writing support for members’ documents, and organize professional development and training for its members. In addition, they raise funds and do outreach in their community to determine local policy needs and build networks of local contacts to help promote the work of their students on-campus. The national office connects student work to the policy process by publishing a series of journals, conducting national policy events, coordinating legislative outreach, and promoting Roosevelt fellows in the media. The national office also offers direct support to chapters through grants, regional organizers, research support, and technology. |
The Roosevelt Institution is a nonpartisan, nonprofit national think tank devoted to bringing students' policy ideas to the policy process. The opinions expressed on this site are exclusively those of its members. DC Headquarters: Roosevelt Institution / 1527 New Hampshire Avenue NW, 4th Floor / Washington, DC 20036 || Fax: (202) 483-2657 |