Estela Lopez
Credentials: Ed-GRS Fellow
Estela Lopez is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Educational Policy Studies program and is concentrating in Comparative International Education and Global Studies. Estela’s research interests focus on the intersection of race, gender, and class status and inequalities in STEM education and the workforce in the U.S. and Brazil; She looks at non-cognitive factors (identity, utility, self-efficacy, and interest) and how they affect persistence of women of color in engineering programs. Estela’s research interests have been informed by her experience as first-generation Latina student in STEM. She holds a B.S. in mathematics and B.A. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master’s of Public Affairs from Indiana University Bloomington, and a Master’s in Educational Policy Studies from UW-Madison. Prior to coming to UW Madison, she worked in Institutional Research for a nonprofit organization in the DMV area.
Publications
Grooms, A. A., Peters, A. L., Lopez, E., Ogden, K., Childs, J., Martinez, E., & Duran, S. (2025). When Past is Present and Future: How Contextualizing a Community’s Historical Context Can Shape the Development of Equity-Focused Principal Pipelines. The Urban Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-025-00738-8
Bullington, K. E., Ison, M. P., Lopez, E., & Li, J. (2025). Financial Considerations of Vertical Transfer Students: Salary and Student Loan Outcomes for Bachelor’s Degree Recipients. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2024.2420905
Awards
Virginia Landwehr Award
2025 International Division Pre-Dissertation Scholarship