Public Policy Analysis Challenge

Dr. Tara Natarajan is Krebs Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, as well as Dean of the Faculty, at Lake Forest College. A renowned economist, she has published a number of peer reviewed articles, an edited volume, and special issues of journals. She specializes in the fields of international development and poverty, and economic thought and philosophy. Provost Natarajan’s research focuses primarily on dryland agrarian areas, ecology, and questions of food and livelihood security among the poorest. Concomitantly, she has published on the values of economics and methodology, with an interest in approaches that expand the scope of economics. With scholarly publications in these areas, she is formally trained in interdisciplinary systems thinking grounded in a humanistic philosophy.

After earning her Bachelors degree in Economics at Sophia College in Bombay, India, and her Masters degree in Economics from the University of Bombay, Provost Natarajan spent a gap year in Norway, studying human rights, and North–South relations and the environment. She then continued her studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where she earned her PhD in Economics.

Prior to her arrival at Lake Forest College in 2023, Dr. Natarajan served as Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Earlham College in Indiana, and as a well-loved Professor of Economics at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont for nearly twenty years, before becoming Dean of the Faculty.

Dr. Natarajan views engendering an ethos of sustainability as community practice and a commitment to environmental studies as central to Lake Forest College’s academic mission. As Provost, she has supported the interdisciplinary Environmental Studies curriculum, created internships and course-based experiential opportunities for students, and led campus initiatives around sustainable practices such as composting. During the 2024–2025 academic year, Provost Natarajan led the development of an interdisciplinary affiliation with The Ridges Sanctuary in Baileys Harbor, Door County, Wisconsin, an educational partnership made possible through introductions by Trustee Claudia Wyatt Johnson and her husband Rick Johnson. During the summer of 2025, the first two students completed exceptional summer internships at the Ridges Sanctuary focused on ecological research, conservation, and environmental monitoring. The choice of Governing the Environment as the topic for the 2025–26 Public Policy Analysis Challenge is intended to provide students with the opportunity to engage with myriad environmental problems and topics from a policy perspective.