Hello! I’m a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago Inclusive Economy Lab, a Principal Investigator at MiiE Lab, and an incoming Assistant Professor in the LBJ school of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. I received my PhD from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago where I also completed the Econometrics and Labor Economics fields in the Economics Department.

In my research, I investigate the causes and consequences of inequality in variety of contexts. Much of my work is centered on understanding barriers to education –such as financial constraints or beliefs about academic abilities shaped by representation– and the role that education policy can play in eliminating them. I particularly focus on non-traditional and informal educational contexts, including community colleges, homeschooling environments, and religious private schools.

In collaboration with the Inclusive Economy Lab, I have worked extensively with the public community college system in Chicago to evaluate the effectiveness of their educational policies in expanding access to education for low income students. Examples of ongoing work within this partnership include studying the effects of free community college and analyzing the long-term impacts of holistic student supports. Additionally, I apply and improve upon AI tools from the fields of computer vision and natural language processing to measure representation of people and topics in the images and text of educational materials commonly used in religious private schools and by homeschooling families. The methods introduced in this work allow me to examine changes in curriculum over time and across contexts on a larger scale than was previously possible, and also expand the set of tools available for social scientists to use text and images as data.

I have held multiple prestigious fellowships, including being a 2023 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow, a Discovery Doctoral Fellow at the Data Science Institute and a Committee on Education Fellow at the University of Chicago.

I’m a first generation college student and a community college alumna who is committed to mentoring students with similar backgrounds. I was the inaugural Co-Chair of the First Generation Education Scholars AEFP Community Group along with Susan Dynarski.

   

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