Christopher S Hayter

My teaching focuses on helping students connect ideas to action, with a particular emphasis on service-learning courses, most recently Georgia Tech’s Task Force (capstone) sequence. In Task Force, my co-instructors and I use design thinking to help students work with real clients and stakeholders to frame and test solutions to feasibly addressed policy problems. I also teach policy analysis, research methods, and microeconomics, where I emphasize analytical rigor and the practical application of theory. Across my courses, I approach teaching as a form of coaching and mentoring, and I see the classroom as a reciprocal learning environment where I learn from my students as they build the skills, judgment, and confidence needed for a wide range of policy-related career paths.

My research focuses on academic entrepreneurship, examining how early-career scientists, engineers, and technical teams navigate uncertainty as they engage in commercialization, prototype development, and startup behavior. Specifically, I examine how these individuals develop and broaden their professional identities as they experiment with new commercially oriented responsibilities, respond to uncertainty and failure, and balance these activities with their roles as scientists. These questions are motivated by practical policy problems, including what happens to postdocs who do not obtain academic employment and the efficacy of university and government programs designed to support entrepreneurship. My goal is to improve policies and programs in ways that support the professional development and career outcomes of scientists, while also improving the impact of publicly funded research investments.