Marc Hernandez (AB'00, MA'02, PhD'09 Psychology) joins the podcast to discuss his experience as a multiple-time alumni and his career at NORC at the University of Chicago.
Marc Hernandez is Associate Director of The Bridge at NORC, a program that connects NORC researchers with those at top-tier schools and serves as a bridge between researchers and on-the-ground practitioners. An applied developmental psychologist, Hernandez has expertise in cognitive development and early childhood and elementary education. He is a member of the Getting on Track Early for School Success project, leads the Kindergatrten Readiness Indicator (KRI) project, co-principal investigator of NORC's independent evaluation of the Oakland Promise, and works closely with foundations such as the Kenneth Rainin Foundation in Oakland, CA.
Hernandez earned his PhD from the Department of Psychology in 2009, his MA from MAPSS in 2002, and his BA from The College in 2000.
Kelly Pollock:
Hello and welcome to Dialogo, a podcast where we interview alumni of the Graduate Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. I am Kelly Pollock, the Dean of Students.
Paul Poast:
And I'm Paul Poast, Deputy Dean in the Social Science Division here at the University of Chicago.
Kelly Pollock:
And today we are thrilled to be joined by Marc Hernandez, who is the associate director at the Bridge at NORC and a principal research scientist there. He's also a triple alum of the University of Chicago, received his BA in 2000, his MA in the social sciences in 2002, and a PhD in psychology in 2009. Welcome, Marc.
Marc Hernandez:
Thank you. Happy to be here.
Kelly Pollock:
Yeah. So let's go way back to start. What initially brought you to the University of Chicago at all? And then later we'll talk about what made you want to stay for so long.
Marc Hernandez:
Yeah, I'm a little bit different than maybe the typical UChicago student. If you're going to take way back, I always like to start by describing kind of ... The short answer is I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I didn't have a lot of guidance. So I'm a first generation college goer and the oldest in my family. So I had no guidance whatsoever, had no idea. I knew I wanted to go to college. My parents wanted me to go to college, but I didn't know where I was going to go or what to look for. So me being a proto UChicago student, I got all of those brochures in the mail and started like ... I had a ranking system and all these different numbers I put to it. And at the top of my list ended up being University of Chicago. I'm like, "Oh, is that UIC?" I'm like, "What is the University of Chicago?"
And so I spent some time. I'm like, "It came out on top, so it's got to be the place I belong." And so I really got into it. I came to a visiting day and stuff and fell in love with the university right away. Loved everything about the life of the mind and all those things. I'm like, "Oh, this is for me." And so it became my number one focus. I applied early action, got in. So yeah, that's kind of how I got here and then stayed. How did I stay? Well, I told you that I didn't know what I was doing. I just didn't have guidance. I was kind of going along on my own.
To even take a little bit further back, I have a picture on my desk across the midway at NORC of a wooden box car, a train box car. My dad grew up in a box car in the western suburbs of Chicago on a rail spur with a potbelly stove and no internal plumbing. He was one of 15 kids born of a migrant Mexican and my grandfather and my grandmother who was half French, half Mexican herself, but a U.S. citizen. So they came from no means whatsoever and built a life here. And so the fact that I ended up going to the University of Chicago a generation after potbelly stove is quite something, but there was a great interest in, and that was what kind of drew me to Chicago, was just learning, learning, love of learning, and that would be the way to gain social mobility.
So I came to the University of Chicago with that in mind, that kind of guidance, took some classes. I was interested in biology and pre-medicine at the time. I got a BA in that. And at the end, I always loved learning. Learning kids. I liked medicine and learning medicine and learning. And I decided in my junior year, after having taken all those classes to take the MCATs, which I did, that I actually didn't want to go that route. And so what would I do? And again, being a UChicago student, I decided, "Well, I think I have enough credits that I can take a full course load in my fourth year and complete all of the requirements for a psychology degree as well, because I think maybe that might be a route I want to go."
And so I did. And I oftentimes don't ... I feel like I really fully did a biology degree, but not so much the psychology because I just kind of took the classes I needed to so that I was already thinking ahead like maybe I need to get some post-secondary education in that space. Met a faculty member, as is often the case here, I think, who was a wonderful mentoring guide, knew me better than I knew myself, knew the buttons to push to get me to do things that I didn't even know I wanted to do at the time. And as I was graduating that year, I was actually done. I'm like, "I did so much work. I need a break. I need a break."
And what I was thinking I was going to do was go work at the Boston Consulting Group. I had a person there who said that ... I'm like, "This is great. I'm going to do this, but I'm going to take a year break and then go there." And so this professor tells me, she's like, "Well, you know, you should..." I have a new National Institute of Children Health and Human Development Grant focused on conflict resolution," which is something I was very, very interested in and she knew that. "Would you like to work in my lab in the year that you're taking in between and you can be a research assistant?" I'm like, "Oh, that sounds very practical."
So I did that for a year. And of course, halfway into that, I ended up becoming the coordinator of the lab and the project, and I loved it. And she's like, "You really should get a PhD." And I'm like, "Oh, absolutely not. There is no way I'm getting a PhD. I'm going to go off ... At most, I'm getting an MBA and I'm going to have Boston pay for it. And that's what I'm doing. I'm not doing any of that. I don't want to do that." She's like, "Okay, you don't think you want to do that, but maybe what you should think about doing is getting a master's degree." Because I was at that point, I'm like, "Well, I'm really dedicated to this project. I don't know that I want to go anywhere right away."
I'm like, "Well, is there a program here that would give me some type of post-secondary education, graduate education, but that can be done very quickly that I could make marketable in the business world?" And she's like, "Actually, maybe you should think about the MAPS program." I'm like, "Oh." Which was actually at the time through ... I was in Beacher Hall, so I was on the other side of the door and pick at the time, literally feet away. I'm like, "All right, maybe I should do that. That sounds like maybe that would be good." And it's a year long program and I could continue to work on the work I'm doing. I almost have a built-in thesis there. So I did that.
And about halfway through that year, she says to me, "Marc, you really should get a PhD." I'm like, "Nope, nope. I'm not going that route. I'm going to use this. I'm learning the statistics, all those marketable skills for business." I'm like, "This is what I'm thinking about. I'm not going to get a PhD. What the heck am I going to do with that?" Meantime, there's no one else that can guide me other than her because no one in my social circles other than my fellow students from the university had any clue about what I was doing, potbelly stuff.
So then I ended up ... She's like, "You know, Marc," and this has got halfway through my MAPS here, "You're doing everything that the PhD students are doing. You're in the same classes with them, you're writing and you're not getting any of the credit that they're getting. And by the way, you can get a fellowship that they'll pay for it. You're paying for your MAPS degree." I'm like, "Oh." Poking, poking, poking. I'm like, "You know what? Maybe I should apply to the PhD program." And so at that point, I was still thinking though, but I'm only going to do it because I think I can get some ... It was a good point, she was like, "You can get a degree that will put you on a trajectory to have more options in the future. If you want to do your business thing, you can go do it. If you want to be in academia, you can do it. If you want to go do something else, you can go do that."
It's about, sure, building expertise in a content area as this developmental psychology, but there's all these other things you're going to learn, like the statistics and study designs and all these things that could be helpful. I'm like, "All right." And so there were two programs and she was crosslisted in both human development, compared to human development in psychology. And so me being me and not really knowing, I'm like, "Well, you know what, this is a real no-no." I can't tell because both of them had things I liked about them. At one point, I'm like, "Well, maybe I do want to do something more like clinical psychology." And at the time there was a professor here, Burt, who did some of that.
And so maybe I could go do more clinical type work if I went into the HD program and it was more ethnographic and qualitative. On the other hand, the psychology, having come out of biology and stuff was like experimental design and quasi-experimental studies and statistics. I'm like, "Well, which of the" ... And she did more mixed methods research. And so I'm like, "You know what? I can do pretty much what I would be able to do in HD and psychology and maybe I won't be going clinical, but those are very applied skills beyond academia. So I'm going to go ... I think I want to go to psychology." But I really couldn't tell at the time. So I applied to both programs and I got into both programs.
And so the chairs of those programs came and talked to me about like ... Well, I've learned that that was not cool because I was holding kind of spaces in two parts of the university and I need to pick one. And so that was also a lot of anguish and I ended up deciding to go for the psychology for all the reasons I think I was kind of hitting on. It felt like a really good match. And of course, you cannot be at the University of Chicago for this long and not start thinking, "Well, maybe I should revisit my ideas about what I want to do and maybe I don't want to go become a consultant and work in that field." And so it was during that process.
I actually ended up staying in the program, as you said, 2002 to 2009, longer than I had anticipated because I had started with that conflict resolution. That's what my dissertation was on. But I had said I really love schooling and learning and education research and we didn't at the time have the committee on education. We didn't have an education department. And so this grant, there was a new grant that she and I had worked on to the National Science Foundation that was focused on early STEM learning and a developmental perspective. And so I'm like, "If I can work on that, I can get experience working in classrooms, in school systems. This is where I see myself going."
And she said, "Marc, if you go this route," she's like, "You could finish up your dissertation and be done with it because you've been working on this conflict resolution and everything. But if you want to do that, you can do both, but it's going to slow you down. Do you really want to do that?" I'm like, "Yeah, I do." So I did. So I'm just staying here for a very long time. I got my PhD. At the very end of it, she was looking to put in a very large program project grant with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development with all these different collaborators from around the country. And she wanted to have NORC be the entity within the university that would manage it.
And so I was helping her and at that time, I needed to make some more money. So I'm like, "All right, I'll work with you on this grant with NORC." And I had only ever gone to NORC once. In the psychology program, one of our professors had an appointment over there and he taught a statistics class. And so I go over there for some statistics, but really didn't know what it was. And so in working on this proposal with her and with NORC, I learned about something I didn't know existed like, oh, there's places where you can go and do research that isn't in academia, but it kind of feels like it is. And like, wow, this is very interesting. And the people were really cool and really smart and they're doing really impactful work.
And what I will say is that I always knew, I always had this ... As I mentioned, I was thinking I was going to go into business, that I wasn't wanting to be in academia. I was very much tempted to it. I knew I could do it well, but there was something I wanted more that was more applied and I found that I could maybe do some of that at NORC. And so I asked the person in charge of what's now the Bridge at the time, and I was working with her on this grant proposal and I said, "Would you be interested in a person like me over here? I'm going to be graduating in a few months with my PhD." And she's like, "Yes."
Now again, what I didn't know, all this I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know, was that I was an opportunity, I think, to grow there a new line of work because NORC is an independent research organization. It's affiliated with the university, but separate from it. It's a not for profit organization and it does a lot of policy related work and it primarily historically for the federal government developed the field of scientific survey research. I'm not a survey researcher, that's not what I do, but what I learned was I'm an evaluator. I can take all the skills I had and evaluate programs and in early childhood. And so they're like, "There may be a possibility for you to do this kind of work, let's think about it."
So I talked to some of my advisors here at the university and I'm like, "What do you think about this?" And they said, "You know what? Treat it like a postdoc. Go there for a few years, do your research, publish things. And if you like it, great. And if you don't, come back. Go apply, get on the job market, get into academia." And so I did that, and I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't know that I was the only developmental psychologist over at NORC at the time, that there wasn't people doing evaluation work on early childhood. We were doing big studies on survey research, but not what I was doing. And so I ended up building ... They gave me the leeway to build a team, which I now have, it's about 20 people, 25 people that does early childhood care and education research for all different types of entities where its goal was to do very applied.
And the focus was to reduce, and it still is, it's to do research that reduces educational inequity in kids early in life. And so if a project does that, if it's a policy, it's a program, it's an intervention, it's a professional development, it's community build, whatever that may be, that's the type of research we want to do and that's what we do. And so it was a very long-winded answer to your question. I told you at times, but that is how I came to be at the university, how I stayed here for a very long time. I didn't know better. And I'll tell you right now, I probably wouldn't recommend that to other people now in the position I'm in, but it got me to where I am and I'm very happy with where I am today.
Paul Poast:
I mean, that's wonderful. And I think we can just wrap up the podcast. I think you've hit all our questions and answered everything. No, it's really great. And I think obviously one thing we usually ask after how did you come to UChicago is how did you go down the career path that you were on? And of course you've already answered that, but one thing that I think I'm curious about is can you say a bit about the current project that you're working on?
Marc Hernandez:
Oh wow.
Paul Poast:
And specifically talk about, in your case, I would say this is much more direct than maybe a lot of the other folks that we interview because of the fact that as you described NORC, it's like I'm doing kind of the research that I've been trained to do and so forth. But I think we'd love to be able to hear about what project you're currently working on and also just talk about how your training in psychology at the PhD level, you find that to be something that you're bringing to bear when working on this project.
Marc Hernandez:
Yeah. I mean, I could not do the work I do without the PhD I have. I mean, it was definitely the right choice. I mean on a daily basis, I mean, I'm constantly using what I learned in my PhD. At the broadest level, now I'll get into a project, but at the broadest level, I mean, a lot of the ... I usually say the two types of work that I do in my job are program evaluation and tool and instrument development. Program evaluation, either someone comes to me with something that they want to evaluate it or I'm replying to an RFP, but they want to know oftentimes, does this thing work? So an intervention designed to increase literacy skills in preschool kids. All right, so that's the goal.
I want to increase literacy skills. What is this program doing? Well, this program was set up to provide professional development to teachers and give them some intervention strategies, some strategies that they can implement in their classroom. And they're going to do that using a data informed approach where they're going to do formative assessment frequently. So they're going to teach teachers about whatever in the development of literacy skills. They're going to collect data on how those kids are performing on a regular basis. And then they will have taught these teachers both kind of through typical, more rote learning and then through coaching and professional learning communities, peer support, like how to see that in kids and how to adapt when kids are learning or struggling to learn.
And so they have this program and they want to know from me, are we having the desired effect? Are we increasing these kids' skills at a rate greater than if that program was not in place? So that is, and there's ways that we can do that. So okay, first I want to create the research question around that, right? The research question here is what is the impact of this particular intervention on kids' literacy skills? I need to identify what the program is and is not. I need to understand what the ... So it's like defining the intervention, thinking about the measures that we're going to use to assess that outcome. But then I also want to go a little bit further because I often don't want to just know is it working. I think the really smart folks that have the money to do it want to know why.
Because there's always the possibility that it isn't working. And if I don't do that why part, I don't know why it isn't working. So this gets into mixed methods research, and so now I'm designing something that will help answer those questions. And so, well, if you really want to know causally, we can develop a randomized controlled trial if at all possible. And in some instances, that's possible and sometimes it's not. And so, well, what's the next most rigorous thing I can do for you? Maybe we can do a quasi-experimental design. Those are all things that I learned in my PhD program. Now, the unit of analysis was typically a person, right? And we had sample sizes of like 30 kids or something like that or parents we'd look at, making that much bigger when I'm looking at interventions for literacy development across schools or something like that.
So all of that kind of the methodology and the statistics you apply to answer those questions, designing or using things from the field, like tools from the field or designing your own for observation, for interviewing, for focus group, all of that type of stuff, all that came from ... Some version of that came from the PhD program. So yeah, all the time. Do I use my deep knowledge of child development and cognitive development, social [inaudible 00:19:41]? Well, maybe not as much, but in that instance, actually, I do have better ground like language development and oral language developments related to literacy and decoding and things like that. So that one is actually really quite highly aligned.
At a place like NORC or any type of independent research organization, they tend to be ... And this is a big difference as compared to academia, is that it's all soft money. So those places, and people like me, are responsible for constantly fundraising to get money to do projects, federal governments, state governments, philanthropy, foundations. So you're constantly, because you're soft money, you're constantly raising money for projects. And so the point of that is there is no single project typically that can fund a person's position. So we all work on multiple projects. It's a very unique thing. Maybe you have a federal contract where it's $50 million to study something, and so it can cover your salary and everyone else's.
But for the most part, people like us have multiple projects. So I have many, many projects that I'm working on right now and constantly am. And then I'm looking to create new projects to bring to the door. So if I were to choose a project, or maybe I can make this a choose your own, some projects I'm working on right now, there's a project we're working on that's looking at the intersection of music education, K-12, in-school music education experiences, and later life workforce outcomes. And this is a question, the hypothesis of this group that we're working with, the Tullman Foundation, Let Music Fill My World, is what it's called, the project, is that there are skills that you learn when you are in a music ensemble or learning to ...
It could be choir, it could be instrumental, it could be modern band types of things, that develop your brain and your skills in such a way, creativity, collaboration, attuning to others, empathy, things like this that lead to precursors of or support development of 21st century skills, and that those skills end up being those intangibles that really make people ... What makes someone really excel in the workplace later on? I mean, you can have two people have identical backgrounds in terms of their academic history or whatever, but someone's going to succeed more. What is it? And it might be that. And so they wanted us to look, is there anything in the literature that says that this relationship exists, either theoretical or empirical, obviously we'd like to see some empirical evidence.
If there isn't, or if it's lacking, which the answer is there's some, but not a lot, it's really not very well empirically supported, could we look at extent data sources that might have information related to this and do some statistical analysis to see if we can identify correlation? And the answer to that was yes, there were. And so we did some analyses and found that there were some correlations and they were looking very promising in data sets that were not designed to answer this question. And so we developed a conceptual framework that described our theory of change that kind of described how these early on experiences might end up leading to these later ones so we could communicate that to the field, but also begin to think about how we might evaluate and do research on it.
And then where we are right now, later today, I'm going to be submitting this proposal back to them, which is what if now, let's say, can we collect some data contemporaneously designed specifically for this purpose now that we know there's a there there to see if we can find these relationships more pointedly. And so we just put together a proposal to do that and we're hoping to get that done within the next six months. They'd like to see some results to be able to put out to the public prior to the beginning of the next school year, so in September of 2026. And so eventually we want to do some work that's more like to get to those randomized controlled trials, looking at those causal impacts.
But again, in our space, there's kind of like that leveling up of the more rigorous you go, the more costly it gets, the more time it takes. So it doesn't make sense to go and shoot for the moon from a funder's perspective when you don't even know if there's a there there. And so the first step is there a there there? Is there something for us to follow through on? And so that's like a current project that I'm doing. And is that related to my background as a PhD in developmental psychology? Well, I mean, yes and no. I really focus on early childhood, I would say that birth to eight space, age eight.
but our group as a whole takes a life course kind of perspective. And so, I mean, I do know a thing or two about what happens when kids are developing in elementary and middle school into high school. And so I have a team of people around me that know things that I don't know. And I do think, I mean, I'm a developmentalist first and foremost, so thinking about those experiences and how they impact you and inputs and outputs and shaping your thinking, so.
Paul Poast:
But even just from the standpoint of being able to think deeply about research design, about what is necessary to be able to evaluate a hypothesis, whatever that hypothesis might be, depending on, as you say, the funding source and the kind of questions they're asking, that's something that you would hope anyone with a PhD is able to be able to bring to bear to whatever problem they're facing.
Marc Hernandez:
Exactly. Exactly.
Kelly Pollock:
Yeah. So one difference, of course, between maybe strict academia and the work that you do is that you have a client.
Marc Hernandez:
Yes.
Kelly Pollock:
And so you have to be able to speak a language that's not just academic.
Marc Hernandez:
Yes.
Kelly Pollock:
Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like and how you developed those skills?
Marc Hernandez:
Yes. Yes, yes and yes. And I think that that is often the most challenging part about transitioning from a PhD program into this line of work. I don't know if I should say this out loud at the University of Chicago, but I say, I have this saying among our new PhDs that come into our space that I'm like, "I have to do a little bit of academic deprogramming with you." And that is part of what that means. You have all these skills and they're applicable. I mean, you might have to think about, well, how is it like ... In academia, and particularly in psychology, because I know I'll speak to it, your goal is to really become expert in something very constrained and iterate on that and move forward knowledge, right? That's what you're doing.
Here, we want you to back up and think more broadly. I'm going to apply and kind of ... There's this kind of concept of good enough in our space, which is very off-putting to academics and particularly University of Chicago academics. What do you mean good enough? I need to be able to spend 300 hours on this and only focus on this. No, actually you have to work on six different things. You've got 40 hours to work on it because we're constrained by resources and our clients. And so it's a different way of thinking. So just the way of operating is a different way of operating. And there is a bit of a different way of thinking.
But yes, I mean, those clients can vary greatly about what their knowledge of the content and the methods are and how you communicate what you want to do for them is a skill to be learned. So here's some examples. The federal government has many of the contracting officers who are your main point of representatives or your main point of contact or program officers, they have PhDs themselves. And so you're talking to a peer there, and so they understand. And oftentimes when I'm doing early childhood research with the federal government, they have developmental psych ... They're just like me, so it's just that we're ... So that's an easier interaction and they get it. And so you're speaking the same language, it's an easier transfer.
If you're working with maybe a foundation or a philanthropist who has not been trained, sometimes they are, sometimes they're not, you're speaking another language to them and they may not fully appreciate, depending upon whether or not they have funded this type of work or not in the past, like, "Oh, that's a lot of money. I thought that you could do something like this for less. When you say that you need a counterfactual, you want to get a whole group of people who are doing nothing and you're going to spend how much money on getting data from these people for what reason? Why can't I just take a look at a single group and see, are these kids changing over time? And if they are great, then our program is successful."
Well, yeah, you could do a single group pre-post design, but let me tell you what you can get from that or what you can't get from that. And then you get into these conversations about what is it that you're trying to do? What do you want to be able to say? Who's your audience? What do they want to know? What do you think is going to convince them? Because I don't want to tell you, you need to spend a million dollars on something because my academic hat says, "That would be amazing, and that would definitively tell you whatever you need to know, but actually maybe this is good enough. Maybe I actually can do this kind of comparison. Maybe the data isn't exactly what I want, but it gets close enough."
And the purpose of them doing this is because they need to convince a funder to continue funding this program and the funder really doesn't care so much about this and that. They care about this. So there's that navigation that you have to do and that's the part that you learn by being out there and doing this work in almost like a ... The way that we train people, almost like an apprenticeship type of way. And so I'm a principal research scientist. I'm the lead of the work and negotiate these things with clients. And then I have my research scientists who are newer PhDs or mid-career PhDs who come along and they're kind of learning from me in terms of how you negotiate these things.
So yeah, from the beginning, from deciding what that scope of work is and how you're going to implement it and what the designs will be and how much money you spend to the interpretation of what you end up finding. I could just throw at them an effect size and be like, "This works." And they're usually really happy about that. But if they needed to go talk about that with someone, well, I actually don't know what an effect size is and I don't know how that really relates. And I just know that it's big and my research person's telling me this is really good. And so yeah, I mean, there's a lot of ... I love it because ... One of the things I love about it is I take that as an opportunity to teach.
I'm always trying, and I actually write this in our proposals that I think is something that helps us do one is we want to build your capacity to be able to continue to do at least ongoing research that can help you with continuous quality improvement of your program. We want you to be able to talk to other people about what we've done so that you're not just kind of like, "Here, read this." And that you know, because hopefully your program continues on, it works in perpetuity and you're going to need to do more of this [inaudible 00:31:31].
Paul Poast:
Actually, what you were just bringing up kind of leads into a meta question, if you will, which is something that we've been asking some of our guests recently on the podcast is thinking about the value of PhD education going forward. And so obviously you've already shared some personal narratives, personal story about how it plays a role for you and in your career to this point. You've even mentioned about working with newly minted PhDs or relatively, but where do you see the value of PhD, PhD education, doctoral education going forward, especially in fields that are in the social sciences?
And it's just something that I think, especially given what you were just talking about of trying to help educate not just the people who are working at NORC and developing them and the apprenticeship model, but also with the funders themselves. And you bring a particular perspective of like saying, "Oh, they don't think quite the same way as I do." So I think I like to hear you unpack that some in terms of thinking about the value of a doctorate going forward.
Marc Hernandez:
Yeah. I mean, it's a difficult question because the world is changing very fast right now. And what I would have said a year and three months ago is probably not what I would say today, but I hope it changes. So I think there's two things that are in my mind that are shaping the answer. One is the political environment and the value of research and data, particularly objective data and information. I mean, people want data, everyone does, especially ... I mean, so I don't see any change in that. It's just some things people, politicians want to take a look at are things they don't need to look at anymore. So let me [inaudible 00:33:43]. So there's the kind of the political situation and the funding environment and the value of objective research.
And on the other side is AI. And so those two things are what's in my head. So right now, I could not do the work I do with my team without people who have PhDs. I just could not do it. So I greatly value it. What do I value about it? Well, I certainly value the skillsets that they bring. It's been a long time. When I was trained here, I was trained on using like SPSS and people don't use that anymore. Well, maybe some people do, but everyone uses R and stuff like that. I do not do R. My folks, my team do that for me. So I mean, I know what analysis I need. I know what outcomes I'm expecting. I know how to interpret it, but like actually carrying that out, I really can't do that such anymore. But I need people who understand ... People understand that as well. So the skills that come from at least quantitative social sciences, very, very important.
As well as I told you, we do mixed methods. So as well as the qualitative methodologies, how to interview people, how to create unbiased interview scripts or observational protocols, all that type of stuff. So that is things that people learn to do in their PhD programs and could not do my work without that. So yes, very important. The thinking part as well, although as a University of Chicago undergraduate alum, I would also say that is the thing that we learn to do. We learn to think, right? And so could a undergraduate work for me without a PhD from the University of Chicago? Absolutely. And actually we have someone come over and work for us.
But usually it's a combination of that, learning how to think, learning how to design and then applying that with the experience that you gather from doing the work in a PhD program and understanding what works and what doesn't and those trade-offs. So very important. And do I see that going away? No. In my space. Right now, the fact of the matter is there's not a lot of research being funded by the federal government, and particularly in the early childhood space, education space. And so for nonprofit organizations where a large part of how they exist comes from federal research dollars, that's very hard.
And so it's hard to find positions for people at this moment. Will it always be that way? I sure the heck hope not. So that's kind of like a near term, job markets are tough. I think they're tough in academia as well, right? And actually for quite some time, it's been tough. So academia produces many more PhDs than there are positions in academia to fill, but the idea is that not everyone's going to go to academia. They're going to go out into industry, not just places like mine, but I have a friend who is a sociology PhD here, brilliant statistician. He's working at State Farm doing some crazy statistical modeling or whatever he's doing over there. And to be frank, part of that was the result of the job market and that there's not having as much government funded work available. So important, absolutely critical.
Probably the bigger thing, and none of us know much about this right now because it's so rapidly advancing is just AI and what that will mean to us. And I'm 100% convinced that what things look like today, the world five years from now will not be what it looks like today. And I can see a bit of it. All the organizations, our peer organizations ourselves and others are really heavily investing in artificial intelligence, getting people to learn how to use it. And the reality of it is like there isn't really an expert you can go to in AI right now. It's really just, you need to sit down with it and use it and figure out how best you can use it. And the thing is like six months from now, what you were doing today, it's growing exponentially.
And so I think one of the things is to learn ... It's a tool. So I think it's really important to learn how to use that tool. And the thing that I've seen, at least with myself and some others that are successful with it is learning how to ask the right questions and iterate. And that goes back to that learning to think thing and being able to do that in combination with some type of expertise, either that's content expertise, it's methodological expertise, it's working with that translation with people. So at this stage right now, it's really important to have the expertise that comes with having really meshed yourself in a content area like in a PhD or through experience, working in a space, a practitioner, for example.
But for you to work with it as if you had like a really smart person next to you that's like taking in everything and never forgets any of it and is learning from you as you go. So I mean, I think that's kind of ... So it's still important. What I worry about, what I will say is that in terms of agentic AI, which is where things are going, where they're trying to learn to be you ... Let me put it this way, I can do something right now like I just did the other day, I was able to do a task that would normally take about five research assistants and a week and a half in an afternoon by myself. And it came out exactly the way I wanted it because I told it exactly what I was wanting in it to do. And so what does that mean going forward? I don't know. I don't know.
So those are the things that are in my mind, but is there, back to your original question, value of PhD? Absolutely it's very valuable. But I think that, and I took this approach, and maybe I'm biased because I took this approach, but when you're doing it, when you're in your program, thinking about not only that space in which you're focused to get your PhD, that corner of psychology and cognition and looking at some type of object permanence, really tight, to expand that out and say, "How can I apply what I'm learning? What am I learning and how can I apply to beyond this space?" It is a meta thing. It's a very much a meta thing, right? That learning how to think in certain ways, learning how to navigate talking with people who are not another PhD or an expert, because the reality of the world is if you're not going to be in academia, that's what you're going to have to be able to do.
Kelly Pollock:
We've asked a lot of heavy questions. So here's a lighter question.
Marc Hernandez:
Yes, please.
Kelly Pollock:
Which is, in all of the time that you were a student here, what were the kinds of things you did for fun?
Marc Hernandez:
Fun at the University of Chicago?
Paul Poast:
We know. We know it's where fun goes and die. Yes.
Marc Hernandez:
Don't you know? I mean, what are you talking about?
Paul Poast:
We're fully aware, but nevertheless.
Marc Hernandez:
Of course. What did I do for fun? Oh my goodness. I mean, I loved being here. I mean, the thing that immediately comes to mind, and of course, going back to undergraduate, just being in the dorms with friends and all the things. The one thing I was really excited about when coming here is like I'm going to meet all these really smart people, like really super smart people from all over the world with all these experiences are going to be really different for me. And that's what I wanted. I wanted to experience that. I come from a relatively rural town, it's a the town, like 3000 people. Yeah. You ever heard of Bossy Bingo?
Paul Poast:
No.
Marc Hernandez:
At homecoming, they'd go out to the practice football field and put a, what do you call it, a grid out there and they sent the cow out there and wherever you buy squares basically and wherever it went.
Kelly Pollock:
Yeah, this happened at my high school too.
Marc Hernandez:
You know what I'm talking about?
Kelly Pollock:
Yeah.
Marc Hernandez:
That's the type of thing I came ... Very homogenous. It was a great experience. I had a wonderful, wonderful time in high school, but so that's what I was looking forward to. So when I think back of the fun things, it was just like being in people's rooms or at the dining hall or after class in this beautiful environment, having those like really deep conversations about things that like I never even ... Well, I didn't even imagine I'd have conversations like that, but definitely not in high school. So it's not a single thing. It was just kind of the nature of being here. And yeah, I never got so little sleep and yet wasn't nearly as tired as [inaudible 00:42:57].
Loved, loved, loved going out to the lake. Frequently went out to the lake. When I was an undergrad, I lived in the Shoreland, which doesn't exist as a dorm anymore, but it was right across the street from the lake and go out to the point and when it was warm, go swimming and biking and all different types of stuff. Love that. Love going downtown Chicago. So since I came from an early rural environment, but then urban, being able to get on the bus and go down there. I didn't do it very frequently because there was so much ... Just a lot of homework. But as in graduate school, I did that a lot more for sure. So taking advantage of the city and also just events at the university has concerts and plays and things like that. So yeah.
Paul Poast:
One question we like to ask before we're done here ... You've given us a lot. It's just great. This has been great. No, I mean that in a good way. [inaudible 00:43:54]. I know you keep saying I give long answers, but we love the long answers. This has been terrific, but is there anything that we should ask? Is there anything that we haven't asked that you're like, "I'm surprised you didn't ask this"?
Marc Hernandez:
I'm going to ask you a question back to answer that question.
Paul Poast:
All right.
Marc Hernandez:
So what is it that students right now that are coming into SSD, into graduate programs are asking you? Or what are their concerns? I mean, we know their aspirations, I'll go like ... Because that's something, I mean, I do have some experience on the other side of that.
Kelly Pollock:
Yeah. I think, I mean, every year students coming in are asking, "Are you going to place me in a career that I love?" That's always a big question and-
Marc Hernandez:
Well, let me ask, are you going to place me in a career that I love?
Kelly Pollock:
Yeah.
Marc Hernandez:
I don't understand that question.
Kelly Pollock:
Yeah. Well, I think at one point the question was, "Are you going to place me in academia? Am I going to find a job out of here?" But I think that's less commonly the question now, because I think people coming into any PhD program, anywhere in the world right now, know that going into academia may or may not be the outcome, but people who come and spend so much of their life in a program want to know that they're not just going to get a job at the end, but that they're going to get a fulfilling career at the end.
Marc Hernandez:
Interesting. I'll tell you why I'm surprised by that. And I'm not, but I am. I think this is just a change from not quite 20 years ago. I shouldn't age myself that much. There was a time at the University of Chicago where people did not talk about doing things other than academics. You didn't do that, especially ... I mean, you just didn't. And I'm really happy that the university over time has changed to be more ... And I don't know that there was ever anything canonized or institutionalized like that you shouldn't. It was just like, this is the place where the uber academic goes. And so anything beyond being an academic is just like, "What are you talking about?"
And so there's been a great effort over time that I've seen, and I've done interviews and panels about this alternate career types of things or careers that aren't academic. Even that word alternate. So the default is you're going to be an academic, and if you decide that you can't or you don't want to, well then we'll figure something out. But there really is this effort toward, this engagement around there are other opportunities that are equally as ... I'm even biased in that way. I can't even say it without being prejudiced and saying as good as academia.
Kelly Pollock:
There's a full range of opportunities.
Marc Hernandez:
A full range of opportunities, right? And so that's one thing, which I really I'm very happy that that's happening. And I encourage people, I always encourage people to be looking ... Even if you were like, "There's no other option than I'm going to be a professor," keep your mind open to other things. Just keep your mind open. Maybe you will, but maybe you won't. And you don't want to be in a position where you haven't thought about it. And there's just so much you can do, as I was mentioning earlier with a PhD, and it may be nothing ... And I should say this, it could be absolutely not related to what you're doing right now.
I don't know how many times out there I've met people who are decision makers, either they be in policy positions or program leads or program officers who had entirely different backgrounds, they were in humanity, they were an art history major and now they're doing something like we're focusing on RCTs and early childhood policy. How does that even ... But they do. So being very open in that, and I think it's great. So hear, learn, be open to hearing the different types of things that you could do.
But the other thing that surprised me about that is that where you will place me, it was very much the case that like, well, you're going to figure it out on your own or you're not going to help me with anything. I'm not expecting you to put me in anything. And so the fact that there's this kind of like ... And I think I like it, that the university is doing more than just preparing you to be an academic in this particular area, but this broader view, and I'm going to help you to give you the skillsets and think about those skillsets to get on a course towards a career in something, I think is really like that's like, wow, to me, just that's new. That isn't how it was and I think it's really great.
Paul Poast:
I mean, it's part of the reason why we're talking to you right now.
Marc Hernandez:
Well, there you go.
Paul Poast:
It's very much the reason why we have this podcast is because we want to be talking to faculty, or excuse me, our graduate students who have gone on to a wide range of careers so that our current students, prospective graduate students can hear these stories and realize, wow, there really is this rich range of career paths that I could go down. And yes, maybe they do come in saying, "I still think I want to be a professor," and that's great. But to know that there could be a lot of other directions, there could even be some things that are going to be careers at the end of my PhD that don't exist right now.
Marc Hernandez:
Exactly.
Paul Poast:
That I could be prepared for. I mean, that's part of the message that we want ... We hope that, especially the students or prospective students that are listening to this podcast take away.
Marc Hernandez:
I love that. And I always like to emphasize about my own personal history that I am a kid who had no idea what the heck I was doing, really. Just go to the best school you can possibly go to and learn and hopefully you'll get some career. I mean, really, I didn't know what do people ... Let me put it this way, I remember driving by houses with my parents and being like, "What do those people do? There's so many of these big giant houses that they make enough money to be living in a house like that. Are they all doctors and lawyers? There can't be that many doctors and lawyers." No, there aren't. There's all these other careers.
So I always say I stumbled very fortuitously into where I am today and I'm doing something that I absolutely love and I wouldn't change a thing about it. And that my own kids, they're 12 and 8, are going to have a very different experience than me because I know an awful lot about how this goes and I'm going to definitely have some opinions to help them along. The point being like, I think sometimes folks think there is a right way to get to this end point. And if I don't go that way, I'm either not going to get there, I'm going to fail, it's going to be like, what's going to happen to me? And that is just not true. It's not true.
I heard that once when I was at an event at the university, I was an undergraduate and I heard from someone say that and I was like, "Oh, I don't know if I believe that." But I've lived that and I'm not the only one. And it really is just taking the opportunities that you have in your program at the university, being open to new things. And maybe the most important thing is if there's something that kind of scares you or you think is just not something that's uncomfortable, to do it. Every time I've done that, I've ended up focusing ... Something positive has come out of that every single time.
And that is one of the things that I've learned. I just like, "Wow, I really didn't want to take that class. I really didn't want to go into that space. I really didn't want to work with that person." But I had to for some reason, or I really felt like there was something that really made me need to kind of do that. And every time, every time it's turned out well. So do it. Don't be worried.
Kelly Pollock:
Well, I think that's a fantastic place to close. So Marc, thank you so much for joining us. This was really fun.
Marc Hernandez:
Thank you for having me. Keep this up. This is great. As an alumni of the university, [inaudible 00:52:19]. I'm very pleased you guys are doing this. Keep it up. Good work.
Paul Poast:
Thank you.
Kelly Pollock:
Thank you.
Marc Hernandez:
Bye-bye.