Shawn Srolovitz is finishing his senior year at Penn and is looking forward to integrating his interests in public policy and engineering into his future work in the healthcare industry. Though Shawn always knew he wanted to study engineering, public policy is a new interest he’s developed while at Penn, one which has been sparked by his extra-curricular work here. As he explains, “My first exposure to policy work was developing education policy with the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education (SCUE).” SCUE serves as the voice for students on curricular issues and is responsible for generating a “White Paper” every five years,–effectively a policy memo detailing SCUE’s vision for the future of undergraduate education at the University. “When I joined SCUE my freshman year, I was able to participate in the development of policy recommendations for the White Paper,” Shawn recalls. “This experience, along with generally being involved in discussions about academic policy at Penn, really piqued my interest in policy more generally.”

SCUE gave Shawn a voice on campus on the issues he cares about most. “As a freshman, SCUE seemed like the perfect forum for doing impactful work with interesting people.” It “provided me an avenue to pursue my passions in education and be a voice for change at the highest levels of the University. From meeting regularly with the President and Provost to lobbying for policy changes at the Council of Undergraduate Deans, I have been able to work on a series of important issues facing undergraduates, including course costs, pass/fail grading, holistic education, and more. I am so grateful to have been able to be a part of the tradition of such an organization that has a long history of benefiting undergraduates at Penn, and SCUE really has been the hallmark of my Penn experience.”

SCUE led Shawn to pursue his budding interest in policy by joining the Public Policy Research Scholars program, as well as to start writing for the Daily Pennsylvanian. In the DP, Shawn found a medium for discussing SCUE’s viewpoints and educational objectives more broadly. He began a column to engage his fellow students on how they could actively participate in educational changes at Penn, as well as to discuss matters of particular interest, such as why a liberal arts education can be practical. Shawn says, “Because of my work with SCUE, I am incredibly passionate about education policy, particularly at Penn, and was grateful to have an opportunity to share that with the Penn student body.”

Shawn came to Penn ready to study engineering but he wanted more than that. “Coming out of a science-focused high school, I wanted to pursue something interdisciplinary at Penn,” he explains. “PPRS has been a great complement to my engineering studies. Because of the courses I have taken in both health and technology policy, I have been able to learn how to apply the principles and problem solving skills taught in engineering school more broadly.” Shawn appreciates that public policy offers him the opportunity to have a larger impact in science and health. As he puts it: “While I loved working at the cutting-edge of science, working in a lab felt too insular to me. After two years in the lab, I decided to take a step back and pursue other opportunities to work parallel to science, rather than directly in it. This led me to intern at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies this past summer, a think tank focused on science and technology policy. I was able to do an in-depth study on policies that would pave the way for the integration of artificial intelligence into the U.S. health care system.”

Shawn’s senior thesis and PPRS capstone project both examine the relationship between payments from medical device companies and physician behavior, but from different angles. With the help of Professors Ashley Swanson and Matthew Grennan at the Leonard Davis Institute, Shawn is “working to uncover the effects of financial relationships between pharmaceutical manufacturers and physicians, and how they affect the care given to patients.” And for his PPRS capstone, Shawn is looking at the changes to those relationships that took place due to the 2010 Physician Payments Sunshine Act. Shawn has enjoyed learning about the research process along the way, explaining, “while I have done a lot of scientific research before this, this is my first time doing econometric and policy analyses. It has been both challenging and interesting to apply the research techniques and skills that I have learned from working in a lab to social science research.”