Angela (aboatman@stanford.edu) received her doctoral degree from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University (2012). Her research focuses on the evaluation of college access policies, particularly in the areas of postsecondary remediation and financial aid. Sample past projects include an examination of how the effects of postsecondary remedial and developmental courses vary by level of academic preparation, and a multi-cohort evaluation of the Gates Millennium Scholars Program. Her dissertation, supported with a grant from the American Educational Research Association, focused on a multi-institution evaluation of innovations in the delivery of remedial courses in Tennessee. She holds an M.P.P in Public Policy and M.A. in Higher Education, both from the University of Michigan.
Post-docs
Elizabeth (Liza) Dayton (edayton@stanford.edu) is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Stanford School of Education and Center for Education Policy Analysis. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Johns Hopkins University (2012), following a B.A. in psychology from Stanford (2003), M.A. in sociology from Stanford (2004), and M.A. in sociology from Johns Hopkins (2009). Her dissertation, supported by an American Educational Research Association grant, demonstrated that supportive family relationships statistically promote first-generation college-going, protect against downward educational mobility, and perpetuate educational success from one generation to the next. Dayton has also examined the potential for intergenerational educational mobility among the children of adults returning to community college, and how switching school and neighborhood contexts via housing and school voucher programs affects youth outcomes. She has performed extensive classroom observations with the Baltimore Education Research Consortium. Dayton’s research interests lie in three overlapping areas: intergenerational educational mobility; the value of noncognitive skills (such as attitudes and effort) for education and career; and the role of families in shaping children’s noncognitive skills and educational and occupational trajectories.
Abby Larson is a sociologist and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. Broadly speaking, she studies how people create and organize social goods. Her research is primarily informed by the sociology of organizations, the sociology of knowledge and technology, the sociology of culture, and social psychology. Prior to Stanford, Larson received her Ph.D. in sociology from the New York University (2006-2010) and was then the National Science Foundation and American Sociological Association Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been named a Fellow at the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, a German Chancellor Fellow by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a Rotary International Scholar, and has worked with organizations such as the Social Science Research Council (2005-2008). Between 2005-2007, Larson helped to establish the Research Alliance for New York City Schools, an enterprise to facilitate empirical research on public schools, and which brings together partners from the public, private, academic, philanthropic, and not-for-profit sectors. Larson has lived and conducted research in Argentina, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, studied at Oxford University, and earned a joint B.A./M.A. with honors from Stanford University.
Ann (annowens@stanford.edu) received her PhD in Sociology & Social Policy from Harvard University in 2012. Her research focuses on inequality in education and neighborhoods. Past and present research projects include work on neighborhood and school effects on educational attainment, subsidized housing and urban poverty, neighborhood mobility and change, and residential and school segregation. Ann is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Stanford University for 2012-13, and she will join the faculty in the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern California in fall 2013.
