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I study the assets and constraints that shape students' college and career readiness and pathways. My scholarship spans K-12 and higher education contexts and is focused on reducing inequities in postsecondary education access, persistence, and success. My multiple-method program of research uses quantitative methods, primarily quasi-experimental and experimental designs, to identify the causal impacts of educational interventions on student outcomes, as well as qualitative analyses of students' perceptions and experiences. For many of my research studies, I partner with educational agencies to conduct evaluations of their policies and programs. I view this work as critical and complementary to my research interests. In addition to answering theoretical questions in the literature, I believe it is imperative to support agencies’ current efforts towards improving the opportunities of their most marginalized students.
Peer-Reviewed Works
Peer-Reviewed Works
The Detroit Promise Path program combines a tuition guarantee with additional support services to help students stay in college. Using qualitative data, we explore the student experiences with the program, as well as barriers that students faced in completing college. We use geocoding software to calculate students’ drive times to their college. We find students benefit from proactive outreach messaging, success coaching, and financial incentives to participate in the program—yet they still face significant nonacademic barriers including transportation and non-tuition expenses that make it difficult for them to persist and earn their degree.
In Detroit, the region’s fragmented and inadequate public transportation infrastructure presents a particular barrier to higher education access and equity. This mixed-method study presents qualitative and quantitative findings alongside a geospatial analysis of Detroit students’ access to community colleges. Findings show that Detroit students bear substantial commuting burdens which reinforce existing geography-based racial and economic inequities in educational opportunity resulting from the city’s built social environment and racialized history. Until recently, research on college access and success has not paid much attention to geographic proximity as a factor shaping whether and where students enroll in college and their likelihood of success. In this study, we apply Dache-Gerbino’s (2018) Critical Geographic College Access framework and show that commuting burden can be one way to conceptualize what is proximal. While this study cannot establish a causal relationship, it highlights patterns worthy of further research and discussion. We conclude that policies or programs which make transportation more accessible or affordable could be an avenue to addressing educational inequities in Detroit, but that decision-makers must consider the mode of transportation students are most likely to use. Longer-term, cross-sector collaboration would ideally focus on expanding the existing transportation systems or investing in region-wide infrastructure to help more Detroit students get to college.
Detroit students who obtain a college degree overcome many obstacles to do so. This paper reports the results of a randomized evaluation of a program meant to provide support to low-income community college students. The Detroit Promise Path (DPP) program was designed to complement an existing College Promise scholarship, providing students with coaching, summer engagement, and financial incentives. The evaluation found that students offered the program enrolled in more semesters and earned more credits compared with those offered the scholarship alone. However, at the three-year mark, there were no discernable impacts on degrees earned. This paper examines systemic barriers to degree completion and offers lessons for the design of interventions to increase equity in postsecondary attainment.
This paper presents results from an experimental evaluation of anintervention designed to enhance virtual student support. Duringthe 2019–2020 school year, randomly selected mentors in a school-based mentoring program received monthly reminders with tips forcommunicating with youth via text, email, and phone. Unexpectedly,the results showed that although the nudges did not impact the fre-quency of mentor outreach (student-reported), they reduced the rateat which students reached out (mentor-reported) and saw themselves as responsive to their mentors. Moreover, and possibly as a consequence, mentors who received the intervention felt less connected to students and less satisfied with their mentoring relationships, and treated students gained less than comparison students from the mentoring program as a whole in terms of their personal and attitudinal growth. The findings add important nuance to the evidence on how behavioral interventions in educational contexts operate. Although past studies find that nudges can support engagement in discrete tasks, these findings suggest that prescribing relational practices may be less effective. Thus, mentor supports must be carefully designed in order to yield the intended benefits for students.
Evidence suggests that preservice candidates are more effective when mentored by more instructionally effective cooperating teachers (CTs). Yet, teacher education program leaders indicate it can be difficult to recruit instructionally effective teachers to serve as CTs, in part because teachers worry that serving may negatively impact district evaluation scores. Using a unique dataset on over 4,500 CTs, we compare evaluation scores during years these teachers served as CTs to years they did not.
Increasingly, states and teacher education programs are establishing minimum requirements for cooperating teachers’ (CTs’) years of experience or tenure. Undergirding these policies is an assumption that to effectively mentor preservice teachers (PSTs), CTs must themselves be instructionally effective. We test this assumption and present the first-ever evidence that PSTs are more instructionally effective when they learn to teach with CTs who are more instructionally effective.
Drawing on survey and administrative data on cooperating teachers (CTs) and their preservice student teachers (PSTs) in Chicago Public Schools during 2014-2015, this study offers an in-depth look at how CTs engage in their mentoring roles during student teaching, and their influence on PSTs. Central to our analysis is an exploration of CTs as both models of effective instruction and as facilitative coaches. We find that both CT roles matter—PSTs feel better prepared to teach when their CTs model effective instruction and coach by providing more instructional support, frequent and adequate feedback, collaborative activity, job-search support, and a balance of autonomy and encouragement.
As civil rights issues make national headlines, history teachers look for ways to bring this sensitive material into their classrooms. In this chapter, I describe structured academic controversies (SACs) as one such possibility. The chapter begins with an overview of the SAC. I then present a model lesson on the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education (1954) designed for a high school history classroom.
Working Papers
Working Papers
What is the Cost of Free? Effects and Costs of Open Educational Resources
For community college students facing basic needs insecurities, textbook costs can make the difference between persisting toward a degree or stopping out. Open educational resources (OER) offer a free alternative to paid materials, yet evidence on impacts and costs to guide OER policy remains limited. Using a decade of data from five Michigan community colleges and a quasi-experimental, difference‑in‑differences design, the study offers some of the first rigorous evidence that students perform equally well using OER as they do with commercial textbooks. Heterogeneity results showed that OER offers a comparable substitute for traditional materials for all students in all courses. Cost analyses combined detailed OER‑usage data with interviews from campus OER leaders revealing that OER compares favorably to many student-support interventions in terms of cost. When approached with intentional planning, OER offers a promising, cost-effective strategy that removes a meaningful non-tuition barrier while expanding equitable access to essential course materials.
Community College Perspectives on Open Educational Resources: Towards Equity and Sustainability
This study explored student and faculty perspectives on Open Educational Resources (OER) at one midwestern community college which has undertaken robust efforts to support faculty OER adoption. Descriptive quantitative analyses summarized student and faculty survey responses. Chi-squared tests for differences in proportions and logistic regressions determined the statistical significance of the differences across student subgroups and course subject areas. The findings showed that textbook costs pose a burden for many community college students, and that these costs can have both practical and emotional consequences. The results also suggested that textbook costs may disproportionately affect students already at higher risk of attrition, with Pell Grant recipients and first-generation college students reporting that they take several steps to reduce textbook costs more frequently than other students. Findings from the faculty survey showed that many faculty are willing to adopt or develop OER, yet the time investment is substantial. Faculty respondents gave their colleagues high ratings in terms of their willingness to adopt OER materials which suggests that institutional investments in initial OER development may yield broader adoption over time, and may justify offering even larger incentives, such as release time, to more fully account for the substantial time OER development requires. Prior research identifies textbook costs as a barrier to student success and this study shows that OER may be a promising alternative. The results of this study raise considerations related to equity, accessibility, and sustainability as community colleges navigate the transition to OER.
When Credit Doesn’t Count: Exploring and Addressing Transfer Credit Applicability
Policy Brief - Maryland Higher Education Commission (Lin & Brockman, 2026)
Community colleges expand and diversify college access, but unless community college students—and their credits—can successfully vertically transfer to four-year institutions and apply their progress towards baccalaureate degrees (BA), the promise of accessible higher education remains unfulfilled. Transfer student progress can be delayed when community college credits fail to transfer or apply towards students’ degrees. We consider this problem in Maryland, where recent policies specifically aimed to address credit loss. This study used data on transfer students who earned BAs at public four-year institutions between 2020-21 and 2022-23. Transfer student BA recipients averaged 9-11 uncounted credits, and while 40% applied all their community college credits to their BAs, 20% lost 18 or more credits as excess, equivalent to over a full-time term of coursework. Results also showed that students in Health and Medicine applied fewer transfer credits to their BAs than students in all other disciplines, and that after accounting for differences across fields, changing majors was not associated with any differences. This study contributes to ongoing state transfer policy dialogues and sets a baseline of transfer student outcomes and credit loss prior to Maryland’s latest wave of reforms.
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