The Education Collaboratory at Yale launched in July 2023. To learn more about our work, we are spotlighting all the dedicated team members of our lab, highlighting their research and what brings them to our team's mission to advance the science and practice of SEL.
What is your role at the Education Collaboratory?
I am an associate research scientist at the Education Collaboratory. I am a mixed methods researcher of child and adolescent emotion regulation and well-being. I am also a licensed psychologist and a certified school psychologist, and I leverage my research and clinical expertise to bring data-driven solutions that are innovative, inclusive, and impactful to the lab. I am also the social representative at the Education Collaboratory. I aim to foster a sense of togetherness and strengthen bonds beyond work with our team by facilitating monthly social games, such as Balderdash and Fake Artist goes to NY.
What brought you to the field of SEL, education, and psychology?
My post-college work experience involved children and adolescents with special education needs in public schools and in juvenile correctional/rehabilitation centers. These experiences aroused my curiosity on variables that are amendable to change and can enable children and adolescents to not only adapt but also thrive in face of challenges and adversities. To learn more, I pursued a doctoral degree in school psychology. I love conducting assessments/evaluations which involve triangulating different pieces of information/data to better understand the thoughts, feelings, and actions of children and adolescents from different contexts, communities, and families. This in turn drew me to assessment development, and I pursued a postdoc at Yale on the development of a digital vignette-based assessment on child and adolescent emotion regulation in schools.
What line of research do you find the most interesting/intriguing in the field right now?
I am interested in emotion regulation assessment and intervention in schools. Emotion regulation is a critical life skill, and schools offer a unique platform to provide support and guidance to a wide reach of children and adolescents as they learn how to regulate their emotions independently and adaptively. I am currently examining child and adolescent patterns of emotion regulation strategy use in school. This includes investigating associations between patterns of emotion regulation strategy use and academic and psychosocial outcomes at school, as well as exploring developmental and interindividual (gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic) differences in patterns of emotion regulation strategy use.