SERP Mentors and Projects

Nick Hillman - Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis

Dr. Nicholas Hillman directs the Student Success Through Applied Research (SSTAR) Lab. His research focuses on the links between finance, policy, and college opportunity. The SSTAR Lab is where Dr. Hillman and his research team put research into action through a research-practice partnership with UW-Madison’s Division of Enrollment Management. SERP students may be involved in collecting, synthesizing, managing, or analyzing data related to issues of financial aid and college access/student success.

Brittany Travers - Kinesiology

The Travers Lab, housed at the Waisman Center, focuses on the intersection between sensorimotor skills and neurobiology in individuals on the autism spectrum (henceforth referred to as “autistic individuals”). Specifically, we focus on (1) human movement and its awe-inspiring, dynamic complexity in neurotypical and neurodivergent individuals, (2) how the brain contributes to individual differences in sensory and motor engagement and changes during maturation, learning, and experience, and (3) how motor skills influence an individual’s participation in meaningful activities (i.e., occupations). As such, our research combines brain imaging with quantitative measures of motor function, cognition, and daily living skills in autistic children, adolescents, and adults.
Based on their goals and interests, SERP scholars would have various opportunities in our lab, including: 1) running school-aged participants through motor, neuropsychology, and neuroimaging assessments as part of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded studies, 2) analyzing behavioral and brain data to examine brain-behavior links, and/or 3) planning the next stage of a biofeedback-based videogame balance intervention for autistic adults.

Brian Burt - Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis

Dr. Burt's current project is a National Science Foundation-funded project on “Black Men in Engineering Graduate Programs”. This work contributes to understandings of how Black males develop their perceptions of what it means to be an engineer (i.e., develop an engineering identity). In so doing, an aim is to pinpoint key mechanisms that improve their academic retention and success in engineering, particularly at the graduate level. Further, the project contributes to the development of new theories (e.g., learning, identity, motivation, advising) on Black men in engineering.

Haley Vlach - Educational Psychology

My research examines the mechanisms underlying children’s learning in order to (1) understand cognition and how cognition develops, and (2) build an empirical base for the design of successful educational and health interventions. My work spans the following cognitive and developmental processes: memory, memory development, word and category learning, concept learning, conceptual development, inductive learning, and generalization/transfer of learning. A central focus is connecting more traditional psychological research to applied settings, such as the design of cognitive interventions and concept learning in the classroom.

Andy Garbacz - Educational Psychology

Dr. Andy Garbacz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology. Dr. Garbacz’s research focuses on promoting youth mental health through strengthening family-centered support, culturally responsive practices, and family-school-community collaboration. Dr. Garbacz emphasizes community partnerships that center equity within school and community systems. Dr. Garbacz serves as Co-Director for the Family-School-Community Alliance, and international organization dedicated to family, youth, and community engaged partnerships in research, practice, and policy. Dr. Garbacz also serves as Co-Director for the School Mental Health Collaborative, a center focused on conducting research that informs policy and practice related to the promotion of social, emotional, and behavioral success of all students.

Karla Ausderau - Kinesiology (Occupational Therapy)

My research program focuses on families and child with autism spectrum disorder. I study daily occupations, specifically eating and mealtimes, to elucidate the impact on the child’s health, family wellness, and overall daily participation. I also study sensory features in children with autism spectrum disorder, including their development, characterization, and impact on daily participation. I hope to have an impact on the daily life of families with children with autism by further understanding the behaviors that influence the child’s daily participation. Also, with better characterization of feeding and sensory behaviors, we will be able to develop more effective assessment tools, targeted treatment strategies, and improved outcomes for children and families.

Percival Matthews - Educational Psychology

Dr. Percival Matthews is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology whose interests focus on the ways the people learn about math and number. Summer research experiences in his lab will revolve around two projects:

1) An NSF-funded project exploring ways to best teach children about the equal sign.
2) A variety of projects exploring learning about fractions, with a special emphasis on the way the human perceptual system might be used to help students understand the sizes of symbolic fractions.

Sarah Short - Educational Psychology

Dr. Short's early research examined prenatal influences (stress, infection) on the offspring’s brain and behavioral development. Her research has also examined the development of brain structure and function in relation to foundational cognitive abilities (working memory) in typically developing and high-risk children.
Building on this prior work, Dr. Short’s more recent research has been directed toward her ultimate goal to conduct research that informs the design and efficacy of early interventions. These research projects have included an investigation of neural plasticity associated with cognitive training in young children, the development of a Parent-Child Mindfulness Based Training program and a large-scale longitudinal study that focuses on the impact of poverty on early child brain development. With the receipt of an award from the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD), Dr. Short and colleagues are currently investigating how poverty ‘gets under the skin’ to impact children’s socioemotional health and the development of cognitive skills that are important for learning (executive functions).Another portion of her work is dedicated to community engaged scholarship. As a member of Mindfulness for All, Dr. Short is working with community leaders, who are bringing mindfulness practices and teacher trainings to underserved communities and to People of Color for whom mindfulness practices have previously been inaccessible.

Diego Román - Curriculum & Instruction

Dr. Diego Román is an Assistant Professor of Bilingual/Bicultural Education at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests are located at the intersection of linguistics, science education, and environmental studies. Specifically, he investigates the implicit and explicit ideologies reflected in the design and implementation of bilingual and science education programs, particularly about environmental topics for multilingual students. Dr. Román's research team has been interviewing students, teachers, and administrators about the school experiences of Latinx students attending schools in rural Wisconsin. Summer research projects include conducting literature reviews of teaching multilingual students attending schools in rural areas of the U.S. and coding data from interviews and lesson plans.

Mitch Nathan - Educational Psychology

My laboratory studies the embodied nature of learning and teaching in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Embodied approaches use movement, such as gestures, as well as physical objects, and social collaboration to engage students in learning that is meaningful to them. For example, we have developed video games that elicit body movements of players who then demonstrate enhanced mathematical reasoning compared to students who do not engage in body-based activities. We have also found that students with limited English proficiency can use gestures to engage in mathematical communication with their peers in ways that help them learn. We already have data collected from a number of studies that would work very well for SERP students who would be interested in STEM education. My lab currently has 9 members at various levels of progress who also provide additional support to our undergraduate researchers. We actively invite undergraduates into the writing and presentation of research findings. We also have social events, even during COVID, such as wiffle ball, online escape rooms, and ice cream socials.

Lab Link: https://magiclab.wceruw.org/

Shamya Karumbaiah - Educational Psychology

Dr. Shamya Karumbaiah is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology who studies human-centered AI for teaching and learning to augment human intelligence. She works with an interdisciplinary team that brings data science, design research, and learning sciences together to explore the ethical and responsible use of AI in education. Summer research experiences in her lab involve conducting user studies, building educational AI systems, designing data visualizations, and reviewing literature around questions such as: 1) How can AI go beyond automation and partner with students and teachers to enhance human-human interaction in the classroom? 2) How do teachers assess the reliability and trustworthiness of AI systems used to support students’ learning? 3) In what ways do AI decisions reflect social and linguistic biases?

Dorothy Farrar Edwards - Kinesiology

Dr. Dorothy Edwards is a Professor of Kinesiology and Medicine. She is also the Associate Dean for Research for the School of Education. Dr. Edwards’ research is funded by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Stroke. Much of her research is focused on exploring the needs and characteristics of cognitively impaired minority and medically underserved urban elders. These studies also examined strategies for recruitment and retention of minority elders and their families for longitudinal studies of Alzheimer’s disease and stroke. Dr. Edwards leads a team of occupational therapy researchers and students in the development and testing of new measures designed to identify adults at risk for difficulty performing complex activities of daily living. Dr. Edwards is also the faculty director of the Collaborative Center for Health equity in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

James Pustejovsky - Educational Psychology

Dr. Pustejovsky is an applied statistician whose research aims to solve problems in how quantitative methods are employed in education and social science research. His main area of interest is meta-analysis, which is the set of statistical techniques for quantifying, summarizing, and synthesizing evidence from different sources (such as primary studies conducted by different researchers in different settings) to draw general conclusions about a phenomenon. He often collaborates with scholars conducting large-scale research syntheses. Additional interests include causal inference methods, research design, and robust statistical methods. Summer research experiences could include working on applied meta-analysis projects or on methodological projects involving the development of visualization tools and software for meta-analysis.

Steve Quintana - Counseling Psychology

Dr. Quintana’s scholarship examines race, ethnicity, culture, and language in child/adolescent development and counseling interventions. For summer, 2024, he and his PhD students are working on several projects including mental health needs for Latinx boys, linguistic diversity in mental health services, and university clients use of social media for mental health support.

Bill Schrage - Kinesiology

The Schrage lab studies cardiovascular (CV) control in humans-focused primarily on control of blood flow to skeletal muscles or brains. Poor blood flow, for instance, can promote CV diseases like diabetes, stroke, and Alzheimer’s disease. The goal is to understand how blood flow is controlled at rest, as well as under stress (exercise, low oxygen, etc), and whether people with risk factors for CV disease have different abilities to regulate blood flow. The laboratory also studies teenagers since their brains are experiencing a lot of brain growth and may have bigger influences of CV risk factors. To study these challenges, the lab uses a combination of doppler ultrasound or MRI to image blood flow at rest or stress. The lab also sometimes use medicines as research tools to understand what goes right and wrong in health and disease.

Nicole Louie - Curriculum and Instruction

Nicole Louie’s research is centrally concerned with issues of inclusion, exclusion, and belonging in schools. She is especially interested in how people’s experiences of these phenomena are shaped by systemic racism and intersecting systems of oppression. Her current project seeks to explore participatory design research as a tool for advancing racial justice in middle school mathematics, centering youth of color and their families as co-researchers and co-designers. Her previous (and still ongoing) work has focused on how teachers of mathematics both reproduce and challenge narrow, exclusionary views of mathematical intelligence as they intersect with racial hierarchies.

Anthony Hernandez - Educational Policy Studies

Anthony Hernandez is a Teaching Faculty of Educational Policy Studies and a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative (WEC) at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) at the University of Wisconsin—Madison (UW-Madison). His research on leadership in higher education focuses on Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) in general and on Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) in particular. He is currently writing a book on Critical Transformational Leadership at Hispanic-Serving Institutions. Anthony has evaluated grant proposals for the U.S. Department of Education Office of Post-Secondary Education for Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions (DHSI), Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans (PPOHA), Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISI), and Student Support Services (SSS) Federal TRIO program grant competitions. He directed a two-year evaluation of the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). He also worked on groundbreaking research on material hardship (e.g., housing and food insecurity) in higher education at The Wisconsin HOPE Lab. He earned his Ph.D. and a master’s degree in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree from Harvard University.

Taylor Odle - Educational Policy Studies

A PLUS or a Minus? A Mixed Methods Investigation Documenting the Decisions and Outcomes of Students, Families, and Institutions in the Parent PLUS Loan Portfolio. This mixed methods project focuses on student loan behavior, specifically for students at HBCUs and MSIs. It combines the quantitative analysis of administrative data from the U.S. Department of Education with qualitative analysis of primary data collected through interviews and focus groups. Students would contribute by recruiting participants (students, families, financial aid administrators) for interviews and focus groups, developing surveys and interview protocols, conducting interviews and focus groups, qualitatively coding responses, and co/authoring policy briefs and other deliverables.

Matthew Wolfgram - Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER)

Matthew Wolfgram, Ph.D., is an anthropologist of education and education researcher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. His research employs ethnography, participatory action research, and other qualitative research methods to study factors that impact the educational experiences of minoritized college students. Dr. Wolfgram’s current project is a National Science Foundation funded study on “Racial Equity in STEM Undergraduate Education for Minoritized Students,” which focuses in particular on the college experiences of Hmong American college students in Wisconsin. This study cultivates authentic, engaged partnerships with Hmong American students, scholars, and communities, and centers the knowledge and voices of those impacted by systemic racism within STEM pathways.

Erica Turner - Educational Policy Studies and Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis

Dr. Erica O. Turner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and an affiliate in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. She examines racism and inequity—and efforts to challenge those. She uses a sociocultural, critical race approach to understanding educational policymaking and practice, and the consequences of educational inequity for students, families, communities, schools, and policymakers. Her scholarship illuminates how diverse groups—from school district leaders to students to community members—make sense of and negotiate education problems, policies, equity, and justice amidst shifting social, political, and economic contexts. She is the author of Suddenly Diverse: How School Districts Manage Race and Inequality (University of Chicago Press, 2020). A SERP scholar would work with Dr. Turner on the following: 1) An ongoing study of race and school district policymaking to address three policy areas: student behavior, the needs of English learners, and the needs of “advanced learners.” 2) An investigation into how Black students and families experienced and made sense of high stakes testing and test-falsification in the midst of broader racial and economic exploitation. 3) A study of how BIPOC families and community-based organizations supported their BIPOC children during COVID-19.

Walter Stern - Educational Policy Studies

Walter C. Stern is an assistant professor of educational policy studies and history at the University of Wisconsin– Madison. His research examines intersections between racism, state action, and ordinary people’s lives in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States, with a focus on public schools and the metropolitan South. He is the author of Race & Education in New Orleans: Creating the Segregated City, 1764-1960 (Louisiana State University Press, 2018), which documents how schools shaped the Crescent City’s racial order and urban landscape. His forthcoming article in the Journal of Southern History examines the wrongful conviction of Gary Tyler, a sixteen-year-old Black student sentenced to death in connection with the 1974 fatal shooting of a white student at their desegregating Louisiana high school. He is working on a book about Tyler’s case. A SERP scholar would assist Dr. Stern with the book project to understand how and why the government's educational and punitive functions became intertwined and the consequences of that merger for Black youth. This project explores these questions through a narrative history of Tyler, whom an all-white jury wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder.