Shay, Park Named Miller Scholarship Winners
Dongwoo Park and Or Shay, doctoral students at the ILR School, will each receive a $2,500 Benjamin Miller Scholarship Fund award to support research activities, Kate Griffith announced. She is ILR’s senior associate dean for academic affairs, diversity and faculty development and the Jean McKelvey-Alice Grant Professor.
The annual awards go to graduate students requiring financial support for research activities leading to the completion of a master’s of science thesis or doctoral dissertation.
Park’s topic is “Micropolitics of green transitions: the case of South Korea’s battery electric vehicle (BEV) industry.”
His research will examine the intricate interplay of government industrial policies, union strategies and corporate decisions within the auto industry, from a macro perspective, to original equipment manufacturers and suppliers.
Park plans to use the award to fund his international fieldwork as he attempts to unravel how union strategies influence employment and broader outcomes in the industry's shift to battery electric vehicle production.
His adviser is Professor Virginia Doellgast, ILR’s Anne Evans Estabrook Professor of Employment Relations and Dispute Resolution.
Shay’s topic is "The Effects of Teacher Unions during the Covid-19
Pandemic." He will research the relationship between teacher unions and student achievement.
Some associate teacher strikes with decreased standardized test scores, and evidence shows that teacher unionization, collective bargaining and pro-union laws are associated with increased test scores. Shay’s research argues that the explanation of this paradox is rooted in the role unions play in reducing teacher turnover, and the COVID-19 pandemic provides a new opportunity to study this theory.
According to Shay, the pandemic created conditions that exemplify the teacher union paradox. Unions pushed for longer school closures, negatively affecting performance. At the same time, the pandemic caused a significant increase in teacher turnover, which unions may have played a role in mitigating. Using mixed-methods research, combining quantitative methods with in-depth interviews, Shay will study the effects of teacher unions on student and teacher outcomes during the pandemic.
His adviser is Ariel Avgar, ILR’s senior associate dean for Outreach and sponsored research, and the David M Cohen Professor of Labor Relations.