UW–Madison’s Beto Castrejón, a rising third-year PhD student in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Policy Studies (EPS), has been selected for a highly competitive state policy internship with the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO).
As an intern, Castrejón will support SHEEO’s Examining Funding Models for Unintentional Disparities project, studying how states fund higher education and developing an equitable funding guide for state policymakers. He will also complete an independent research project using SHEEO resources and attend the 2025 SHEEO Higher Education Policy Conference in Minneapolis this August.
A former university admissions counselor, Castrejón says his professional and academic experiences have shaped his commitment to equity in education policy. “As a PhD student, my research is focused on evaluating higher education policies to understand their intended and unintended consequences on the distribution of resources,” he explains. “Through my work, I am interested in expanding the understanding of social problems to provide better higher education policy recommendations that promote equity among communities who have been historically marginalized.”
He adds: “As a state policy intern, I will have the opportunity to meet and network with current state agency policymakers and other higher education policy partners to further advance equity and diversity in state higher education policy discussions.”
Castrejón is an Ed-GRS (Education Graduate Research Scholars) fellow and a trainee in the Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences, which is funded by the Institute of Education Sciences.
“I am extremely proud of all that Beto has already accomplished in his short time at UW–Madison,” says Taylor Odle, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies. “Securing this nationally competitive internship will only help him further his research and the positive impact it is having on policy and practice at scale. His sophisticated understanding of what we ‘know’ works (or doesn’t) will ensure that decision-makers have a comprehensive yet approachable understanding of ways to better design higher education funding structures.”
Learn more about SHEEHO’s State Policy Interns.