Current Projects
Improving Vertical Transfer. I am currently building my research agenda around three areas of focus. First, I am studying how state and institutional policy can be used to improve B.A. attainment for community college students. With my collaborator, Hidahis Mesa, I am using causal methods to evaluate the effect of existing transfer and articulation policies on community college students’ probabilities of transferring to a university and earning a B.A. We are also using mixed methods to understand how students engage with the policy environment and leverage resources to navigate the vertical transfer pipeline.
Defining High Quality Workforce Training. My second area of focus is the role of community colleges in providing vocational (or career and technical) education and training. I am interested in what constitutes “high-quality” postsecondary vocational training and how short, vocational credentials can be designed to improve labor market access, and access to living wages, for workers. One of my current projects uses causal and mixed methods to evaluate the impact of a competitive grants program in Tennessee meant to expand and improve career and technical education programs. In addition to estimating the impact of completing vocational credentials on students’ labor market outcomes, we are using survey and site visit data to document changes to programs resulting from the large influx of state funding. Our goal is to understand if there are characteristics of programs that lead to better outcomes for students.
Understanding College Student Employment. Finally, along with collaborators at the Community College Research Center, I am conducting an in-depth study of college student employment, with a particular focus on the Federal Work-Study Program. In collaboration with our education agency partners at a large public university system, we are conducting a randomized control trial evaluation of the Federal Work-Study Program to estimate the impact of participating in FWS on students’ academic and labor market outcomes. We are also collecting survey and focus group data from students to better understand how they make decisions about working while enrolled and how they perceive any tradeoffs involved. Finally, because FWS is not means-tested, we are interested in understanding how the aid is distributed, and how this varies across campuses.