Research Projects
Building Pathways to Equity in College STEM: Ecological Belonging Intervention in High School Precollege STEM Programs
Leverages the STEM PUSH Network to adapt, refine, and test the ecological belonging intervention for precollege students. This Ecological Belonging Intervention will be tested in 7 urban areas, reaching up to 2,000 students, providing a range of contexts in which to learn about the intervention's efficacy and will yield a deeper understanding of what intervention features work, and for whom.
Kevin Binning
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Research Scientist, LRDC
Jennifer Iriti
Research Scientist, LRDC
Director, Evaluation for Learning Group
Can We Talk About Race? Racial Socialization in Homes and Schools, Youth's Critical Consciousness, and Academic Achievement
Youth challenge racial oppression by developing a critical consciousness (CC) of racism and other social issues. This work tests whether youth's CC mediates associations between parental and school racial socialization and academic achievement.
Ming-Te Wang
Professor, Department of Psychology
Professor, School of Education
Research Scientist, LRDC
Josefina Bañales
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Center Associate, LRDC
Community Voices Study
The Community Voices Study (CVS) investigates whether or not greater proximity to disadvantage explains lesser returns to family socioeconomic status for underrepresented minority children when compared to their non-minority counterparts.
Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal
Professor, Department of Psychology
Senior Scientist, LRDC
Daphne Henry
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Research Scientist, LRDC
Developing a Dialogue System for a Culturally-Responsive Programmable Robot
Faculty who work on this project are designing a social programmable robot, that is, a robot that middle school students learn to program but also responds in socially intelligent ways. We are designing the robot to be culturally-responsive to populations traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields.
Erin Walker
Associate Professor, School of Computing and Information
Research Scientist, LRDC
Parent-EMBRACE+R: Incorporating Elaborative Reminiscing into A Dialogic Reading Technology for Latino Child Literacy
Dialogic Reading (DR) is a literacy program focused on helping families promote the development of children's literacy skills. Through DR, parents encourage children to learn new words, formulate sentences, and retell the story on their own. Teaching parents to reminisce in an elaborate manner with their children, also known as Elaborative Reminiscing (ER) have shown promising results. We examine the potential efficacy of a program that combines DR with ER within the context of an intelligent reading comprehension app for Latino parents.
Erin Walker
Associate Professor, School of Computing and Information
Research Scientist, LRDC
Diana Leyva
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology
Research Scientist, LRDC
Police Stops and School Adjustment: Examining Underlying and Protective Mechanisms among Black Adolescents
The impact of unfair policing on Black youth's school adjustment is unknown. This project examines whether police encounters predict Black youth's performance in school; if physical and psychological health mediate the relation between police stops and school adjustment, and if racial socialization practices from parents, schools, and peers buffer the negative consequences of policing on school adjustment.
Ming-Te Wang
Professor, Department of Psychology
Professor, School of Education
Research Scientist, LRDC
Juan Del Toro
Post-Doctoral Fellow, LRDC
STEM Pathways for Underrepresented Students to HigherEd (STEM PUSH Network): Leveraging precollege STEM programs for greater equity in Black and Brown student undergraduate admissions.
The STEM PUSH Network is the first nation-wide coalition of precollege STEM programs, STEM ecosystems, admissions professionals, and equity experts using a networked improvement community model to innovate more equitable STEM undergraduate admissions and studying the impact of these new practices. The STEM PUSH Network is an NSF-funded Alliance that directly works with 40 precollege STEM programs from 10 urban areas to strengthen equitable practices within programs and between programs and admissions.
Jennifer Iriti
Research Scientist, LRDC
Director, Evaluation for Learning Group
Jennifer Russell
Professor
Former Senior Scientist, LRDC
Builds racial and cultural competence within ourselves, our units, and our organization to support culturally and linguistically responsive, equitable practices and to have every member of LRDC accountable for this goal. We work to build racial and cultural competence within ourselves, our units, and our organization to support culturally and linguistically responsive, equitable practices and to have every member of LRDC accountable for this goal. We aim for broad representation of the many perspectives and social identities at LRDC. Learn more about the 
LRDC Director's Fellowships: The LRDC Director's fellowships supports PhD study for students whose backgrounds include being part of a historically under-represented U.S. minority groups. Current PhD students or students being considered for admission to a PhD program in one of LRDC's partnering departments are eligible to be nominated for a fellowship. Annual nominations generally due by early February.