4th Cohort: 2011-2012
Two-Year Fellows
Keren Horn is a fifth year doctoral student in Public Policy at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Her primary areas of interest are neighborhood change and the intersecting roles of housing policy and school policy. Her dissertation research analyzes how school accountability reforms and information about school quality shape neighborhoods. She is also a fellow at the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at NYU. She earned her MUP from Wagner in 2007. Her advisors are Ingrid Ellen, Amy Schwartz and Katherine O’Regan.
Dana Charles McCoy is a 4th year doctoral student in the Psychology and Social Intervention program in Applied Psychology. Her research interests focus on understanding the ways in which low-income children's family, neighborhood, and school environments affect the development of their cognitive, behavioral, and emotional self-regulatory skills. Dana is also interested the use of experimental and quasi-experimental methods for informing evaluation of early childhood interventions, programs, and policies. She received her A.B. in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Dartmouth College. Her advisors are Cybele Raver and Pamela Morris.
Sharon Wolf is a 4th year doctoral student in Psychology and Social Intervention in Applied Psychology. Her research interests focus on how the family and school settings operate independently and synergistically to influence children's academic engagement and achievement, both domestically and internationally. She is interested in applying quantitative methods to nationally representative datasets, and in evaluation research, in an effort to inform policy. Her work uses the discipline of psychology to inform policy and practice efforts in education. Her advisor is Larry Aber, and her IES-PIRT mentors are Larry Aber and Pamela Morris.
Four-Year Fellows
Christine Baker-Smith is a Research Assistant and a first year doctoral student in Sociology of Education. She holds an EdM from Teachers College, Columbia University in Leadership, Policy and Politics, an MA Stanford University in the Social Science of Education and received her BA in Sociology from Whitman College. Her interests are in academic engagement/disengagement, transitions across educational structures such as from middle to high school and the delinquency that may manifest from unsuccessful transitions. Previously, Christine worked as the Program Coordinator and Research Assistant for the Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences MA program at Columbia University.
Vanessa Coca is a first year doctoral student in the Sociology of Education program at Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at NYU and a Research Assistant at the Research Alliance for New York City Schools.
Prior to pursuing her doctorate, Vanessa worked as a research analyst at the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago for almost eight years. At the Consortium, she spent most of her tenure there studying the college planning decisions of successive cohorts of Chicago Public School graduates and broader issues of college-readiness. She is the co-author of a number of Consortium reports including: From High School to the Future: Potholes on the Road to Collegeand From High School to the Future: Making Hard Work Pay Off.
Vanessa’s research interests include college choice and the postsecondary experiences of first-generation college students. She received her Master of Public Policy and Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of Chicago.
Maia Connors is a first year doctoral student in the Psychology & Social Intervention program at NYU Steinhardt. Her research interests include early childhood education policy, large-scale systems' support of high quality early education and teachers' professional growth, and adults' support of young children's development. Maia's current research is focused on identifying and understanding features of Head Start centers that are associated with variation in program impacts on key child outcomes. Originally from Rhode Island, Maia received her A.B. in sociology and education studies from Brown University in 2007. After graduating, she spent several years in San Francisco as a Research Assistant at WestEd, a non-profit education research organization, designing and implementing programs and resources to support high quality preschool throughout California. Maia's advisor and research mentor is Pamela Morris.
Michah W. Rothbart is a 1st year doctoral candidate in NYU Wagner. He serves as a Graduate Assistant in NYU's Institute of Education and Social Policy (IESP). Michah's research interests lie in education economics and particularly in resource allocation in education funding. Michah previously served as the Director of Research and Evaluation at the Office of Postsecondary Readiness in the N.Y.C. Department of Education and before that as an Oak Ridge Fellow in the U.S. Department of Commerce: Economic Development Administration. He received a Master of Public Administration from Cornell University concentrating in Finance and Fiscal Policy. Michah’s research mentors are Amy Schwartz and Leanna Stiefel.
3rd Cohort: 2010-2011
Four-Year Fellows
Sarah Cordes is a 2nd year doctoral student at NYU's Wagner School and a Graduate Assistant at IESP. Her main research interests include the racial achievement gap and school choice. Sarah received her MPP from the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in 2010, with a concentration in social policy. Prior to attending Duke, Sarah spent two years teaching middle school math in Washington, DC as part of AmeriCorps. Sarah's advisor and IES-PIRT mentor is Amy Ellen Schwartz.
Allison Friedman is a 2nd year doctoral student in Applied Psychology at NYU Steinhardt. Her research interests include the effects of early childhood education programs on the development of cognitive, executive function, and self-regulation skills as well as understanding the mechanisms of change in the preschool classroom. She is also interested in how biological and environmental factors interact to influence a child's development in the context of the preschool environment. Currently she is working on projects about the influence of preschool classroom composition and teacher stress on the classroom climate. Allison is also interested in the policy implications of this work. She is originally from Long Island, NY and worked at the National Institute for Early Education Research before coming to NYU. Allison's research mentors are Cybele Raver and Clancy Blair.
Jeannie Kim is a 2nd year doctoral student in Sociology at NYU Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Her research looks at changes in student learning over time across high school and college settings. She received her Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education. Jeannie's advisor is Florencia Torche and her IES-PIRT mentor is Richard Arum.
Meghan McCormick is currently a 2nd year doctoral student in the Psychology & Social Intervention program at NYU Steinhardt. Originally from New Jersey, Meghan received her A.B. in public and international affairs from Princeton University in 2007. After graduating, she spent three years as a research assistant at MDRC, a non-profit social policy research organization, working to implement and evaluate a large-scale randomized trial of a relationship education intervention for low-income married couples. Meghan's current research is focused on understanding how family-level contexts influence academic and behavioral trajectories for elementary-aged children. In addition, she is interested in school culture and context, school-family interactions, policy interventions, and the influence of educational reform on the well-being of children and families. Meghan's research mentor is Elise Cappella.
Emilyn Ruble is a 2nd year doctoral student at NYU’s Wagner School and a Graduate Assistant at the Institute for Education and Social Policy. She is interested in education policy issues broadly, while her particular interest focuses on how other social policies affect educational outcomes. Before coming to NYU, Emi was a Teach For American corps member teaching high school English in Indianapolis. Emi is advised by Leanna Stiefel and Amy Schwartz.
2nd Cohort : 2009-2010
Four -Year Fellows
Jonathan Bearak is a third-year doctoral student in NYU's Sociology Department. Exploring how social status impacts socioeconomic stratification, Jonathan's research emphasizes qualities not assigned at birth, such as physical attractiveness and motherhood, in addition to the qualities of one's parentage, such as race and, during childhood, socioeconomic class. Jonathan applies quantitative methods to investigate the reproduction of inequality in education, health, economics and sexuality.
Paula England is Jonathan’s adviser; Jennifer Jennings is his IES-PIRT research mentor.
Jessica Boccardo is a 4th year Doctoral student at the Wagner School at NYU. Her primary areas of interest are education policy analysis and quantitative methods. She is particularly interested in understanding the links between education, innovation and the role of public policy, particularly in developing countries. She is currently a fellow at the Institute for Education and Social Policy (IESP) and prior to NYU she worked at the Evaluation Office (OVE) at the Inter-American Development Bank and the Poverty Reduction Unit (PMRED) at the World Bank and received a Master in Public Policy with a concentration on International Development from Georgetown University. Her advisor is Leanna Stiefel and his IES-PIRT research mentor is Amy Schwartz.
Rachel Cole is a 3rd year doctoral student in the International Education program in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in the Professions.
She is interested in the impact of private tutoring in Sri Lankan education.
She grew up in Concord, Massachusetts and Princeton, New Jersey.
Phil Hosay is Rachel’s advisor and Sean Corcoran is her IES-PIRT research mentor.
Justina Kamiel Grayman is a 3rd year doctoral student in Psychology & Social Intervention at NYU Steinhardt. Her research interests center around community empowerment and education organizing, particularly 1) how schools and other social contexts engender commitments from people for social change and 2) how to engage policymakers & communities of all income & racial backgrounds in action to fight for a meaningful and equitable public education system. Her advisor is Erin Godfrey, and she conducts her research apprenticeship at the Research Alliance for New York City Schools.
Alexandra Ursache is a 3rd year doctoral studentinApplied Psychology at NYU Steinhardt. Her focus is on the development of executive function and its relation to academic performance throughout childhood. She is especially interested in how early environmental factors, such as socioeconomic status and stress, influence executive function and neural development. She is originally from Akron, Ohio.
Clancy Blair is Alexandra’s IES-PIRT research mentor and Catherine Tamis-LeMonda is her advisor.