AQM Fellows
Jordan Rickles
Fellow, Department of Education
jrickles@ucla.edu
Research Interests: quasi-experimental design and causal inference
Specific interests include: Jordan's research interests lie at the intersection of causal inference and multilevel modeling, with his current research focused on estimating causal effects and effect heterogeneity in a non-experimental multisite setting.
Ph.D., Fourth year doctoral student in the Division of Social Research Methodology
M.P.P., Public Policy, UCLA
B.S., School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University
Background: Prior to becoming an AQM fellow, Jordan spent three years as a research analyst within the Los Angeles Unified School District. While there, he examined a diverse set of educational issues ranging from the effects of tutoring services and on-line courses to evaluations of district efforts around mathematics instruction and high school course access.
Advisor: Mike Seltzer
Read his blog: jhr4phd.blogspot.com
Jordan was awarded the Dept. of Education Prize in Memory of Leigh Burstein in September, 2010!
Regina Richter
Fellow, Department of Education
regina.a.richter@gmail.com
Research Interests: medical education, measurement, research methodology
Specific interests include: measures of student clinical performance and new methodological approaches to medical education research
Ph.D., Fifth year doctoral student in the Division of Social Research
Methodology in the School of Education at UCLA
M.A., Museum Studies, New York University
B.A., Anthropology and French Studies, Stanford University
Advisor: Noreen Webb
Jonathan Schweig
Fellow, Department of Education
jonathan.schweig@gmail.com
Research Interests: Research Interests: measuring teacher practice, factor analysis
Specific interests include: multi-level factor analysis, measuring teacher practice, teacher preparation, and mathematics education
Ph.D., Third year doctoral student in the Division of Social Research Methodology
M.A., Curriculum and Teacher Education, Stanford University
B.A., Math, English & American Literature, Brown University
Background:
Prior to coming to UCLA, Jonathan worked as the New York Program Director for Math for America, a non-profit organization that recruited mathematically talented individuals into teaching in New York City public secondary schools. Jonathan has an MA in mathematics education from Stanford University, and worked for five years as a secondary school mathematics teacher at independent schools in Providence, RI and New York City.
Advisors: Felipe Martinez
Larry Thomas
Fellow, Department of Education
ldthomas@ucla.edu
Research Interests: Psychometrics, item response theory, multilevel modeling, Bayesian inference and computation
Specific interests include: Multilevel/multidimensional item response theory; psychometric models for performance assessments; language testing
Ph.D., Fourth year doctoral student in Quantitative Psychology in the School of Psychology at UCLA
M.A. Education, University of California, Los Angeles
B.A. Spanish (Hispanic Studies), Carnegie Mellon University
Background: After receiving his B.A., Larry worked at the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) in their Language Testing Division as a research assistant. While at CAL, he worked on projects related to test development and rater training. Since arriving to the SRM Division, Larry has been a graduate student researcher at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing working on a large-scale evaluation project of elementary, middle and high school after school programs. Currently, Larry works in the GSE&IS Psychometric Laboratory on various projects pertaining to the application and development item response theory models.
Advisor: Noreen Webb
Jessica Tessler
Fellow, Department of Psychology
jtessler@ucla.edu
Research Interests: Multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling
Specific interests include: Cross-classified multilevel models
Ph.D., Fourth year doctoral student in Quantitative Psychology in the School of Psychology at UCLA
M.A., Psychological Research, California State University, Fullerton
B.S., Psychology, California State University, Fullerton
Advisor: Jennifer Krull
Erin Arruda
Fellow, Department of Psychology
erinarruda@att.net
Research Interests: Multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling
Specific interests include: Longitudinal Data Analysis
Ph.D., First year doctoral student in Quantitative Psychology in the School of Psychology at UCLA
M.A., Psychological Research, California State University, Fullerton
B.A., Psychology, California State University, Fullerton
Advisor: Jennifer Krull
Mark Hansen
Fellow, Department of Education
markhansen@ucla.edu
Research Interests: program evaluation, measurement
Specific interests include: research on evaluation (testing prescriptive evaluation theory), evaluation use and consequences, evaluation capacity-building, measurement of program/curriculum implementation (fidelity and adaptation)
Ph.D., Fourth year doctoral student in the Division of Social Research Methodology in the School of Education at UCLA
M.P.H., Boston University School of Public Health, (Social/Behavior Sciences)
B.A., Boston University College of Arts & Sciences (Biology)
Background: Prior to his studies at UCLA, Mark worked with the Medical-Legal Partnership at Boston Medical Center. Last quarter Mark was a graduate student researcher with the SRM Evaluation Group (Marvin Alkin, Director).
Advisors: Li Cai
Mark was awarded the Covington Award for his Characterization of the Sources and Consequences of Measurement Error in test Score Estimates proposal in 2011!
Johnny Lin
Fellow, Department of Psychology
j83lin@gmail.com
Research Interests: psychometrics, data analysis, research methodology, optimal scaling, structural equation modeling
Specific interests include: effects of categorizing continuous variables on statistical procedures, optimal scaling of ordinal variables, data analytic techniques including regression and ANOVA
Ph.D., Fourth year doctoral student in Quantitative Psychology in the School of Psychology at UCLA
B.S., Pyschology, UC San Diego
Background: Johnny was born in Taiwan and moved to California at the age of six. He developed an interest in psychometrics when he started taking research methods and statistics courses in his Honors Psychology program while at UCSD. He has since taken numerous courses in applied and mathematical statistics and plans to use the techniques he has learned in his future research projects.
Advisor: Peter Bentler
Alejandra Priede
Fellow, Department of Education
apriede@ucla.edu
Research Interests: TBA
Specific interests include: TBA
Ph.D., Third year doctoral student in the Division of Social Research Methodology in the School of Education at UCLA
B.A., Economics, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), Mexico City, Mexico
Background: TBA
Advisor: Felipe Martinez
Fellow, Department of Education
megan.kuhfeld@gmail.com
Research interests: TBA
Specific interests: TBA
Background: Before joining the AQM program, Megan spent two years working at the nonprofit research center Child Trends. Her work focused on educational topics such as charter schools and school climate, as well as survey and item development.
First year doctoral student in the Division of Social Research Methodology in the School of Education at UCLA
B.S., Duke University in Psychology and Minor in Statistical Sciences
Advisor: Li Cai
Scott Monroe
Fellow, Department of Education
slmonroe@ucla.edu
Research interests: math education, psychometrics
Specific interests: student learning opportunities, teacher evaluation, instrument validation, statistical modeling
Background: Before joining the AQM program, Scott spent four years teaching high school mathematics in New York City and Culver City public schools. Scott's experiences in the teaching profession have helped inform his current substantive interests.
Ph.D., Third year doctoral student in Social Research Methodology
J.D., Juris Doctor, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
M.S., City University of New York, Brooklyn College School of Education, in Math Education
B.A., University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
Advisor: Noreen Webb
Wes Bonifay
Fellow, Department of Psychology
wesbonifay@ucla.edu
Research interests: Data analysis, statistical modeling, research methodology
Specific interests: Structural equation modeling, multi-level factor analysis, item response theory
Background: Prior to becoming an AQM fellow, Wes worked at the California State University's Center for Teacher Quality where he assisted in the creation and analysis of a hierarchical linear model related to the California public education system. Wes was also employed as a teaching associate in an advanced undergraduate psychological research methods course at California State University, Sacramento.
Ph.D., Second year doctoral student in Quantitative Psychology in the School of Psychology
M.A., Psychology, California State University, Sacramento
B.A., Psychology, University of California, Davis
Advisor: Steven P. Reise
Thomas Soehl
Two Year Fellow, from UCLA Department of Sociology
soehl@ucla.edu
Research Interests: International Migration, Comparative Ethnicity and Nationalism, Quantitative Methodology
Specific Research Interests: (1) Cross-Border connections of migrants - conditions, formations and intergenerational transmission (2) Education, labor force participation and family formation of the second generation in comparative perspective and (3) Comparing the consequences of religious and linguistic diversity in immigrant societies.
Background:
I am a PhD student in sociology at UCLA where I work on a variety of issues in the field of international migration. Before returning to school I gained hands on experience in ethnic politics working for three years as a policy analyst of the New York City Council. Growing up in the Bavarian countryside I moved to New York City in 2001 and lived in the US ever since. In my non-sociology life, I enjoy riding my bicycle up and down the hills of Southern California, volunteering as a mechanic at a bicycle coop and tending to my garden.
Ph.D., In progress, Sociology, UCLA
M.A., Sociology, UCLA
M.P.A, Harvard University – J.F. Kennedy School of Government: concentration in: social and urban policy, quantitative methodology, program evaluation
M.A., Political Science, CUNY
(concentration in: urban politics, immigration, minority incorporation, political theory)
B.A., Urban Planning, University of Kassel: Dipl.- Ing (II), concentration in: urban development planning
Advisors: Li Cai (AQM), Roger Waldinger (Sociology), Andreas Wimmer (Sociology)
Thomas became a Two Year Fellow in 2010!
Juli Simon Thomas
Two Year Fellow, from UCLA Department of Sociology
ejuliast@gmail.com
Research Interests: I study sociology of education and social stratification and mobility. Broadly, my research centers around the ways in which the structure of educational systems affects the ways societies - and groups within societies - view education, focusing on the U.S. and Western Europe. My current research projects include examining the effects of parental job displacement on children's academic achievement, the effects of changes in class structure in urban environments on school enrollment and academic achievement, and the gender gap in charter schools.
Background: After working as an IT consultant for two years, I decided to join the NYC Teaching Fellows. I taught ninth-grade math in Queens for three years and became increasingly fascinated by the social issues and complicated interplay of actors (students, teachers, parents, administrators, institutions) in this setting. I decided to study sociology to let myself address these interests through quantitative research.
Ph.D., In progress: student in Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
M.A., Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS), Columbia University, New York, NY
M.S., Mathematics Education, Saint John’s University, Jamaica, NY
B.S., Engineering Visualization (independent concentration), Brown University, Providence, RI
Pont-Aven School of Art, Pont-Aven, France, summer program abroad
Technische Universiteit van Delft, Delft, the Netherlands, spring semester abroad
Advisor: Jennie Brand (Sociology)
Juli became a Two Year Fellow in 2010!
