I have been fortunate to have a diverse career trajectory with experience as an out-of-school time program manager, teacher, instructional coach, technical assistance provider, youth development trainer, measure developer, and researcher. Across these experiences, I have had a window into how adults and youth learn, and have been focused on supporting adults that work with young people to do that work effectively. My current research focuses on the effective practices of adults who work with youth, especially those that support the development of youth’s social-emotional skills and ethnic-racial identity. My rich career in school and out-of-school settings makes me well positioned to examine effective practices and support their wide implementation.

Undergraduate Studies

I graduated cum laude from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, VA in 2002, with a bachelor of arts in sociology. Upon graduation, I was hired at the Higher Achievement Program in Washington, DC., an out-of-school time enrichment program for motivated, economically underserved DC middle school students. As assistant center director, I planned and managed programming and recruited and trained more than 60 volunteer mentors to work weekly with youth.

Masters in Education Policy

In 2003, I enrolled in the Education Policy program at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, where I worked with Janine Remillard to study the impacts of reform mathematics curricula on teachers' and students’ learning. My masters thesis was entitled The role of critical discourse in teacher learning: A case study.

Public School Teaching

While in graduate school, I also completed the requirements for teacher certification, and was hired at Paul Public Charter School in Washington, DC in 2004 as a middle school math teacher. The five years I spent teaching gave me intimate knowledge of adolescent development and the challenges students and their families faced in their daily lives. My colleagues and I came up with creative ways to support student academic and social-emotional development amidst these challenges. I also served as an instructional coach and spent part of my day observing and discussing instructional practices and reviewing student academic performance with my math colleagues. In this role, I saw how student learning could impacted by supporting teachers to learn effective practices. This interest continues to drive my work.

Program Quality Improvement and Youth Worker Professional Development

In 2009, I began working at the David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality, led by Dr. Charles Smith, and held three positions over my seven years there. I began as a coach providing technical support to Michigan 21st Century Community Learning Center programs. I supported youth program leaders through an improvement cycle centered on using observational assessment data to reflect on practice. I then transitioned into the role of Design and Innovation Specialist, in which I developed products and services to support quality improvement systems in 105 out-of-school networks, including online training, live training agendas, and workshop materials as well as publications. Finally, I served as the manager of Performance Information and Data Products. I led a team of five staff that managed large, longitudinal, nested quantitative data sets, produced reports for youth service organizations to use in decision-making, and directed large-scale research projects with our organizational partners.

Mixed-Methods Research: The Social and Emotional Learning Challenge

From 2013-2016, I managed a mixed-methods project designed to extract and describe best practices employed by exemplary programs to encourage the development of social-emotional skills in teenagers, particularly those exposed to trauma, poverty, and injustice. The Social and Emotional Learning Challenge was a partnership between a national funder, the Weikart Center, eight exemplary youth programs serving vulnerable youth, and a team of technical research consultants. I coordinated all aspects of the project including: conducting site visits to each program; conducting an extensive literature review; selecting and developing measures; managing quantitative and qualitative data collection; leading qualitative analysis with three coders; co-authoring manuscripts; presenting at conferences and meetings; and maintaining positive and effective relationships between all collaborators. One of those collaborations was with Dr. Reed Larson, who consulted on all of the qualitative data analysis for the project. In addition, I planned and facilitated three live meetings in which the practitioners, researchers, and funders came together to synthesize findings. This work has been shared with hundreds of youth workers through the Weikart Center’s training and performance improvement programs.

PhD in Human Development and Family Studies

I began the Ph.D. program in Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016, under the advisement of Dr. Reed Larson. My colleagues and I collaborated on a research study to identify practices used by program leaders to develop youth’s social-emotional skills on Outward Bound expeditionary learning courses. For this project, I managed data collection, cleaning, and organization for 60+ interviews and 6 focus groups; coordinated multiple data collection sites; analyzed interview data using grounded theory techniques and NVivo software; and supervised undergraduate researchers who assisted with the data management and coding. My dissertation used this dataset to describe youth program leaders’ experiences of stress on Outward Bound courses and identify the processes by which pairs of leaders support each other to manage stress.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

As a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychology and the School of Education at the University of Michigan working with Dr. Deborah Rivas-Drake and the CASA Lab, I managed the School and Community Pathways to Engagement (SCoPE) Project. SCoPE is a longitudinal mixed-method study of adolescents’ social-emotional learning, ethnic-racial identity and sociopolitical development, and civic engagement conducted in partnership with a large Midwestern public school district and CASEL.

Drawing on the SCoPE Project findings, we began to develop a measure of teaching practices that promote Racial Equity-Oriented Social Emotional Learning (REQSEL).

Assistant Professor of Human Development & Family Studies

In 2021, I joined the Department of Human Development & Family Studies at Central Michigan University. I am excited to continue my research on practices for racial equity-based social-emotional learning that affirms and uplifts the transformative work afterschool practitioners are doing every day. I'm also excited to teach Adolescent Development and Program Development to CMU students who are passionate about providing culturally affirming supports to children, families, and individuals.