NIJ Research Assistantship Program Roundtable with Shannon Magnuson

The NIJ Research Assistantship Program (RAP) offers doctoral students practical and applied research experience in the criminal justice field at the federal level. Throughout a student’s journey with NIJ’s RAP program they are able to work on original data collection, analyze national trends, partake in stakeholder meetings, get a glimpse into the solicitation and grant selection process, and understand how federal policies and priorities are operationalized in practice.

Recently, NIJ hosted a webinar to provide an overview of the eligibility requirements, application materials, and explain the candidate review process for the 2021 – 2022 academic year application cycle. Following this webinar, the ASC-DCS Alt-Ac series hosted a small round table with students interested in the program with fellow alumna of the program, Shannon Magnuson.

The roundtable discusses more specific projects Shannon worked on at NIJ, the skills she used and gain while at NIJ, the direct and indirect benefits of her NIJ experience, how she balanced time away from her home institution/program and dissertation, and helpful hints for how to be as successful as possible as a research assistant (contractor) at NIJ.

We encourage students to first watch NIJ’s webinar before watching the round table discussion. Much of the information discussed in the roundtable assumes basic knowledge of the NIJ program and webinar discussion.

Meeting Resources

NIJ’s Webinar

DCS NIJ Research Assistantship Program Discussion

NIJ Research Assistantship Program Roundtable Notes