Stephanie Moulton (Ph.D. '08)
Ph.D., Public Affairs, 2008Stephanie Moulton was working for an Indiana nonprofit housing and community development organization when she began to see the writing on the wall. It was still early in the millennium, and the housing market was booming, but she had an unusual vantage point from which to see the coming crash. Increasingly, when her agency would offer low-income individuals a chance to qualify for an affordable mortgage through an educational program, they would instead choose the quick fix of a subprime loan that Moulton knew would eventually leave them bankrupt and potentially homeless.
“It frustrated me so much. These individuals were being deceived. We’d end up seeing the same people come back to us for foreclosure counseling,” she says. “I felt at the time that those of us in the field knew what was happening, but there was nothing that could be done to stop it.”
Moulton’s desire to uncover the public policies and initiatives that might help the situation led her to pursue a master’s degree in public administration at Ball State. Soon after, however, she became intrigued by the faculty at IU SPEA. “I truly respected what David Reingold and Les Lenkowsky were writing about housing and low income households,” she recalls, so she looked into transferring to IU.
When she talked with Lenkowsky about her plans, however, he convinced her to apply directly to the doctoral program. He could see how her interests would translate into research that fit well within SPEA’s areas of expertise. His support and that of other faculty members persuaded her that even though she was still working and had kids at home, she belonged in the PhD program at SPEA.
Once accepted, Moulton hit the ground running. She put together a dissertation topic examining how public initiatives could support low-income homebuyers through a complex web of both public and private actors in the mortgage lending industry.
“What I began to see was that one of the most critical determinants of success or failure of low-income homeownership initiatives was the institutions – both public and private – that were part of the home buying process,” she says.
Not long after she arrived at SPEA, the market crashed. And while that was in some ways good news for Moulton – at last, the country was interested in what she had to say – the economic collapse didn’t spare her family. Her husband, an elementary school teacher, couldn’t find work, and when his mother died that same year, it seemed like pursuing her doctorate was another risky bet in an unstable market.
“I was ready to quit,” she says. “I thought it might be best to switch back to an MPA and just be done.” Her mentors, however, wouldn’t let her off easy. “David Reingold said to me, ‘You can leave if you need to, but you have such great potential as a researcher. I think it’s a waste of amazing talent. I really want you to think hard about this.’”
Their faith in her capabilities motivated Moulton to plow through the rough patch and go on to distinguish herself as a rising star in her field. In addition to authoring or co-authoring several dozen articles, book chapters, and conference presentations, she also received numerous grants and honors that enabled her to dig even deeper with her research. Upon completion of her PhD, she received a job offer from the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University, where she now teaches.
As she continues her research on housing finance and ways to educate home buyers, she looks back on her crisis of confidence as the moment when SPEA faculty changed the course of her life.
“They saw talent in me that, at that point, I wasn’t able to see in myself,” she says. “Another school might have said, ‘Okay, this is part of the weed-them-out process.’ But it’s not like that at SPEA. Once you’re there, they really want you to succeed.”