Dr. Alysia Blake completed both her master’s and PhD in Sociology at George Mason University. While completing her PhD, she worked as a Survey Statistician and later as a Statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau. Currently, she is a Management and Program Analyst at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
From 2015-2017, Dr. Blake worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Institute for Immigration Research (IIR). She attributes her time at the IIR as “a huge launch pad to my success.”
A “Pivotal” Experience at the IIR
Dr. Blake explains that she was always “really interested in quantitative aspects of research. Statistics and quantitative analyses were something that I was really good at.” While she pursued this interest in her coursework at Mason, this passion also helped her transition into her role as a Graduate Research Assistant at the IIR.
During her time at the IIR, Dr. Blake learned and mastered the statistical package SPSS and broadened her understanding of immigration research and literature. She contributed to the IIR’s annual report on Immigrant Nobel Prize Laureates, the Immigration Data on Demand (iDod) initiative, a project on immigrants and the arts, and co-authored an op-ed.
Dr. Blake highlights the importance of the IIR’s work surrounding the 2016 presidential election, when she was a Graduate Research Assistant:
At the time, immigration was a polarizing topic…there was a huge need for reliable information that wasn’t biased. I think the IIR fit that need, to give out factual information about immigration.
Dr. Blake recalls “the ability to network, to talk with different people who were in the field and see what different jobs people had, what they were doing, and what their interests were” as a particularly beneficial aspect of her time at the IIR. She explains: "It was a good opportunity in that, one, it taught me how to network well and how to interact in that type of space. And also, it was fun to have that type of opportunity to interact with so many different individuals in different fields, but all having that same interest in immigration."
The IIR also offered important hands-on-experience with data: "Understanding the fundamental things about data – distributions, surveys, samples – and having that practical knowledge and the ability to have all these skills on my resume was very pivotal in launching my career in the federal government, because, even now, I still work with data day in and day out. Having that experience was definitely a launch pad for me."
Dr. Blake explains that her introduction to SPSS at the IIR provided “a good foundation” for later using different coding languages, such as SAS, Python, and R, within the federal government. She explains: “even though the software packages and languages have differences, if you understand some basic things about syntax, that gets you a long way when you’re learning new, different coding languages.” She also still has exposure to geospatial mapping through ArcGIS, which she learned and used at the IIR.
Advice for Students Interested in Research and Federal Jobs
Dr. Blake advises Mason students interested in research to search out “hands-on experience” that they can point to to “illustrate their skills.” She underscores that “you don’t have to do huge things. It could be op-eds. It could be publishing your own papers….for me, it was very pivotal that I was able to have on my resume that I'm able to demonstrate these quantitative and qualitative research skills and say that I did these things…having those resume builders and experiences before you graduate is definitely beneficial, because, honestly, there are a lot of individuals with degrees. But you have to demonstrate the uniqueness of the skill set that you have. And so, the more skills you have, the better.”
Specifically for individuals interested in work within the federal government or in the private sector, Dr. Blake highlights the importance coding languages and data visualization: “If you are a quantitative researcher, Python is big. SAS, also, a lot of people still use. But there has been a greater push to move towards open-source programming languages. So, if that is something that you're interested in, there's a lot of free resources and free guides that are out there where you can learn some of these coding languages. Even some of the data visualization tools – Power BI is used heavily, so that's a good skill to have. If you're able to visualize data and create dashboards, that's something that's very much in demand…Carve out a diverse skill set and learn as much as you can to be able to demonstrate those skills on your resume…the more you can do, the more you understand, the more you can apply those tools, the greater chance you have of standing out.”
For individuals interested in working for the federal government, specifically, Dr. Blake emphasizes that “it’s what you know, and also who you know, that help you in the process.” Networking, attending governmental job fairs, and learning how to write your resume to align with the job posting are particularly important.
July 23, 2024