Much of my research is focused on the academic achievement and career aspirations of high school and university STEM students.
Undergraduate STEM Student Academic Outcomes: Quantitative analysis examining the differences in academic outcomes (e.g. STEM GPA; STEM retention) among bridge program participants, a control group, and the remaining students at the university.
Undergraduate STEM Student Psychological and STEM Changes: Exploring changes in STEM students’ psychological (e.g. self-efficacy, motivation) and STEM (e.g. STEM identity, career plans) measures over their years in college, and whether there are significant differences in trajectories between bridge program participants and control students.
Bridge Program and STEM Major Program Evaluation: Qualitative analysis of bridge program participants’ experiences in the program, as well as an analysis of all participants’ experiences in STEM classes and majors as less-prepared students.
Meta Analysis of STEM Bridge Programs: Meta-analysis of the published literature on STEM bridge programs, exploring their effectiveness on objective academic outcomes (e.g. retention rate, GPA), as well as examining programs for moderators.
Other Research
Life Narratives: Narrative writing intervention among students and workers to determine short-term mental health changes when participants are required to assign meaning and positively frame a stressful event in their academic or work lives.
Academic Resilience. Proposed qualitative study on the resilience of elementary school students in Houston ISD.
Methodologies
I have experience with both quantitative and qualitative analyses. I conduct quantitative cohort-sequential longitudinal analyses, meta-analyses, scale validation, factor analysis, and multiple regression. I have developed a quantitative biodata measure based on themes and constructs found in my qualitative analysis of transcripts of interviews I conducted with less-prepared STEM students.
Technical Skills
I am experienced with SPSS, R, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Qualtrics, and ATLAS.ti.