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CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance (ISLG): Overview

ISLG is an institute within the City University of New York. The Institute’s mission is to assist current and future leaders in government, non-profit organizations and the private sector, in the U.S. and internationally, by offering research, technical assistance, and education and training, to help achieve improvements in the financing, delivery and measurement of critical public services. The Institute’s director, Michael Jacobson, previously served as NYC’s Probation and Correction Commissioner and president of the Vera Institute of Justice.

The Institute is hiring a Research Associate to assist in work with the New York County District Attorney’s Office (DANY) on their Criminal Justice Investment Initiative (CJII), which aims to reduce crime and improve fairness and efficiency in the criminal justice system. This work spans many projects distributed among four portfolios: a) Youth, Families, and Communities, b) Victims of Crime, c) Diversion and Reentry Support, and d) Enhancing Effectiveness Across Systems. In this work, ISLG provides technical assistance to DANY and oversees the CJII, including performance monitoring for all grantees. The Research Associate will monitor the performance of grantees under the Youth, Families, and Communities portfolio specifically. For more information about ISLG and CJII, please visit www.islg.cuny.edu and www.cjii.org.

Position Description

Reporting to the Senior Research Associate (SRA) and working closely with research, policy, and communications staff, the Research Associate will oversee performance monitoring for the Youth, Families, and Communities portfolio, including the Family and Youth Development Programs, Youth Opportunity Hubs, and Programs and Approaches for Foster Youth Transitioning to Adulthood initiatives. DANY and ISLG understand performance monitoring to be a critical aspect of the CJII, helping to adjust the implementation of individual initiatives, ensure initiatives’ success, and inform relevant work across the country. To these ends, the Research Associate will be responsible for the following:

• Developing performance metrics for each of the grantees and initiatives in the Youth, Families, and Communities portfolio, as well as select grantees in the Enhancing Effectiveness Across Systems portfolio;
• Working with grantees to adapt performance metrics according to the specifics of each program/initiative;
• Receiving performance data from grantees and interpreting and summarizing the data into digestible reports and memoranda for DANY;
• Working with the SRA to oversee an online platform for coordinating and organizing performance data across all CJII initiatives;
• Reporting back to grantees about their ongoing performance, including visualizing data to depict grantees’ performance over time;
• Assessing the suitability of CJII grantees for evaluation and making recommendations to DANY about appropriate evaluation designs;
• Liaising with external evaluators selected to conduct process and/or outcome evaluations of designated CJII grantees;
• Engaging key project stakeholders, including personnel from city agencies in meetings, emails, and phone calls;
• Working closely with the SRA, Research and Policy teams to oversee the implementation of the Youth, Families, and Communities portfolio and other CJII initiatives;
• Participating in frequent formal and informal cross-organizational collaboration to generate new ideas and grow the Institute’s body of work.

This is an exceptional opportunity to work on transformative criminal justice initiatives and to assist in building a portfolio of work in a newly-established institute with a talented and ambitious team producing a scientifically rigorous and impactful body of work.