Current Award Recipient

James W. Wilson Award –  Advocacy of Research Activity

Matthew Hora, Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions, University of Wisconsin- Madison

Matthew Hora, PhD, is the founding director for the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (CCWT), Institute for Research on Poverty and Associate Professor of Adult and Higher Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dr. Hora initiated and executed an innovative and highly productive research agenda at UWM. His work activity on internship includes funded research, mentoring emerging researchers, publishing numerous articles, books and book chapters, and delivering many presentations. Hora’s topics have centered on internships, employability, 21^st Century skills, and career development theory, policy, and practice.

Hora founded the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions, whose mission is to generate evidence, educational programs, and research tools that promote the career development and wellness of students as they seek post-graduate success. The center is the nexus for ongoing research and publication. The CCWT website dashboard includes publications and resources for instructors, researchers, practitioners, and students, including research findings that are distilled into short research briefs and videos. Matthew Hora has been a prolific mentor with professional research staff, PhD candidates, and master’s students, helping them to evolve into competent, independent PI’s, in their own right.

Hora’s contributions through the CCWT include The Internship Scorecard – A new framework for evaluating college internships on the basis of purpose, quality and equitable access a research-based framework and tool for designing and assessing internship programs. Between 2018 and 2020 Hora’s CCWT led the College Internship Study, a mixed-methods longitudinal research study which examined the effects of internship participation by student characteristics, barriers to internship participation, structure and format of internship programs, and students’ perceived internship satisfaction and value to their development.

In 2016, Hora’s book on the skills gap won the 2016 Ness Award from AAC&U for best book on liberal arts education, and his research on internships and experiential learning is widely cited on an international basis. Matthew was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education guide, “Building Tomorrow’s Work Force.”