News

Margaret Beale Spencer has won an 2025 Society for Research on Child Development Senior Distinguished Contributions Award. This was announced in the SRCD 2025 Biennial Weekly Update

Susan Golden-Meadow‘s 2025 American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. This award honors psychologists who have made distinguished theoretical or empirical contributions to basic research in psychology.

Linxi Lu, postdoctoral fellow jointly appointed by the Committee of Education and Harris School of Public Policy, has been awarded the 2025 Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award and the 2024 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Outstanding Dissertation Award (Human Development). These prestigious awards recognize her contributions to advancing theoretical and empirical understanding of socioeconomic disparities in the home math environment and early math development through experimental and mixed-method studies, as well as her efforts in designing innovative, scalable interventions to support families in need.

Linxi’s dissertation explores the relation between family socioeconomic status (SES), home math environment, and children’s early math development, with a particular focus on non-Western contexts. Through three empirical studies, her work examines the mediating role of the home math environment in SES-related disparities, investigates the predictive role of Spontaneous Focus on Numerosity (SFON) in parental math talk, and tests a novel, low-cost intervention using toy manipulations to enhance parental engagement in math-related activities. Her findings provide practical insights for bridging early math gaps and supporting socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Her dissertation research has been published in Developmental Psychology (Lu et al., 2023, 2025) and the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (Lu et al., 2025).

Postdoctoral Scholar Linxi Lu was awarded the 2024 American Educational Research Association Division E Outstanding Dissertation Award. 

Professor Guanglei Hong has received a National Science Foundation Training Grant for her project “Advanced Quantitative Methods to Broaden STEM Education Participation: Training Next Generations of Researchers”, read more about the award here. She also was awarded a Spencer Major Research Grant for her project titled “Evaluating Global and Local Relative Effectiveness of Educational Organizations by Capitalizing on Multisite Randomized Trials”.
Assistant Professor Lin Bian was awarded the Social Sciences Division’s 2024 Dean’s Early Career Research Award for demonstrating innovation and excellence in the early years of her faculty career, read more here. In addition, she was recently awarded a National Science Foundation Grand for her project titled “Increasing Social Equality in STEM through Children’s Structural Reasoning”. Read more details on the NSF award here.
UChicago Consortium Director Elaine Allensworth and Professor Melissa Roderick were celebrated in the Hall of Honor during the National Council on Measurement in Education Special Conference on Classroom Assessment for outsized contributions to assessment, assessment literacy, adult learning, and continuous school improvement.

Professor Stephen Raudenbush was awarded the American Sociological Association’s 2024 Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award recognizing outstanding contributions to the field of sociological methodology.

COE Fellow Rohen Shah has received the Behavioral Interventions Scholars Grant from the US Department of Health & Human Services’ Admin for Children & Families for the 2024-25 academic year for his project titled “Learning by Creating Math Tutoring Videos”.
Assistant Professor Anjali Adukia received both the 2023 Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness Early Career Award and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for her project titled “Skin Color and Inequality: Measurement and Mitigation”. Read more details about the NSF CAREER Award here.
Symposium Honoring Professor Allison Davis

Thursday, April 25 – Friday April 26, 2024 (see event page for full symposium details)

Featuring a panel on Education and Race on Friday, April 26th 1:00-2:15pm at the Quadrangle Club with:


Barbara T. Bowman, founder and past President of the Erickson Institute in Early Childhood, Director of Early Childhood for CPS, and long-time friend of Allison Davis


Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and Black Studies at Northwestern, Chair, Black Studies, Ph D UChicago Sociology, and prominent expert on urban neighborhoods


Onnie Rogers, currently of Northwestern psychology, who will join UChicago as Associate Professor of Comparative Human Development, an expert on cultural stereotypes, identity formation and educational inequities


Stephen Raudenbush, Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Sociology and Chair, Committee on Education

Please REGISTER HERE. See events page for full schedule.

We are pleased to announce that the Committee on Education has received a new grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, which will fund a new cohort of doctoral students in the social sciences with an interest in education research. This program will be accepting applicants in the upcoming 2020-2021 academic year.

View a press release announcing this program’s launch here.

 

 

Five Committee on Education Pre-Doctoral Fellows are recipients of the 2020-2021 W. Allison David Research Awards, bestowed by the Division of the Social Sciences and the School of Social Service Administration. These awards are part of an initiative that honors the life and work of Professor Davis, a faculty member at the University of Chicago from 1942 to 1983. Awardees are students conducting research that carries forward Professor Davis’ lifelong work on the causes and consequences of racial and social inequality. The five Committee on Education Fellows who received this award include:

Karlyn Gorski, Sociology
Project: On Edge: Schooling in the Urban Periphery

Ezra Karger, Economics
Project: The Unequal Expansion of High Schools across the United States: 1850–1951

David Knight, Political Science
Project: Reconceptualizing Youth to Early Adulthood in the Era of Mass Incarceration

Darnell Leatherwood, Crown Family School
Project: A National Assessment of School District Variation in Black Student Academic Achievement

Helen Lee, Comparative Human Development
Project: “Fighting Back is as ‘American’ as You Can Get”: A Case Study of Chinese American Youth Collectively Constructing Alternative Racial Narratives

Read the full press release here.

 

In Remembrance: Dan Lortie (1926-2020), Influential Sociologist of Education
Professor Susan Goldin-Meadow was elected in April 2020 to the National Academy of Sciences. Read the press release here. Read more about Professor Goldin Meadow’s work in UChicago News’s discussion of her election to the National Academy here.
Committee on Education Fellow David McMillon, a PhD student in the Harris School of Public Policy, has won a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for 2020 for his proposal to study school disciplinary policy.  David’s challenging and original approach combines dynamic mathematical modeling and empirical evidence to uncover potentially surprising effects of following alternative policies.
Committee on Education Fellow David Knight, a PhD student in Public Policy, has also been awarded a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for 2020 for his proposal to study school disciplinary policy.  David’s current research examines how public policy shapes young people’s sociopolitical development and transitions to adulthood across a variety of unequal settings—namely, criminal punishment, urban schooling, and housing.
Committee on Education Fellow Eos Trinidad won the annual Philippine National Book Awards’ 2019 Best Book on Professions. Read more here.
Committee on Education faculty members Stephen Raudenbush, Susan Levine, and Lisa Rosen recently spoke at a conference on the early childhood learning environment hosted by the University of Chicago Center in Hong Kong. Read more here.
  • 2019 AERA Division Outstanding Dissertation Award goes to Xu Qin (Ph.D., 2018, Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago) for her dissertation “Causal Mediation Analysis in Multisite Trials with an Evaluation of the Job Corps Program.” Click here to read more.
  • Professor Susan Goldin-Meadow to give 2019 McGovern Lecture at American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting. Click here to read more.

News

Postdoctoral Scholar Linxi Lu was awarded the 2024 American Educational Research Association Division E Outstanding Dissertation Award. 

Professor Guanglei Hong has received a National Science Foundation Training Grant for her project “Advanced Quantitative Methods to Broaden STEM Education Participation: Training Next Generations of Researchers”, read more about the award here. She also was awarded a Spencer Major Research Grant for her project titled “Evaluating Global and Local Relative Effectiveness of Educational Organizations by Capitalizing on Multisite Randomized Trials”.
Assistant Professor Lin Bian was awarded the Social Sciences Division’s 2024 Dean’s Early Career Research Award for demonstrating innovation and excellence in the early years of her faculty career, read more here. In addition, she was recently awarded a National Science Foundation Grand for her project titled “Increasing Social Equality in STEM through Children’s Structural Reasoning”. Read more details on the NSF award here.
UChicago Consortium Director Elaine Allensworth and Professor Melissa Roderick were celebrated in the Hall of Honor during the National Council on Measurement in Education Special Conference on Classroom Assessment for outsized contributions to assessment, assessment literacy, adult learning, and continuous school improvement.

Professor Stephen Raudenbush was awarded the American Sociological Association’s 2024 Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award recognizing outstanding contributions to the field of sociological methodology.

COE Fellow Rohen Shah has received the Behavioral Interventions Scholars Grant from the US Department of Health & Human Services’ Admin for Children & Families for the 2024-25 academic year for his project titled “Learning by Creating Math Tutoring Videos”.
Assistant Professor Anjali Adukia received both the 2023 Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness Early Career Award and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for her project titled “Skin Color and Inequality: Measurement and Mitigation”. Read more details about the NSF CAREER Award here.
Symposium Honoring Professor Allison Davis

Thursday, April 25 – Friday April 26, 2024 (see event page for full symposium details)

Featuring a panel on Education and Race on Friday, April 26th 1:00-2:15pm at the Quadrangle Club with:


Barbara T. Bowman, founder and past President of the Erickson Institute in Early Childhood, Director of Early Childhood for CPS, and long-time friend of Allison Davis


Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and Black Studies at Northwestern, Chair, Black Studies, Ph D UChicago Sociology, and prominent expert on urban neighborhoods


Onnie Rogers, currently of Northwestern psychology, who will join UChicago as Associate Professor of Comparative Human Development, an expert on cultural stereotypes, identity formation and educational inequities


Stephen Raudenbush, Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Sociology and Chair, Committee on Education

Please REGISTER HERE. See events page for full schedule.

We are pleased to announce that the Committee on Education has received a new grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, which will fund a new cohort of doctoral students in the social sciences with an interest in education research. This program will be accepting applicants in the upcoming 2020-2021 academic year.

View a press release announcing this program’s launch here.

 

 

Five Committee on Education Pre-Doctoral Fellows are recipients of the 2020-2021 W. Allison David Research Awards, bestowed by the Division of the Social Sciences and the School of Social Service Administration. These awards are part of an initiative that honors the life and work of Professor Davis, a faculty member at the University of Chicago from 1942 to 1983. Awardees are students conducting research that carries forward Professor Davis’ lifelong work on the causes and consequences of racial and social inequality. The five Committee on Education Fellows who received this award include:

Karlyn Gorski, Sociology
Project: On Edge: Schooling in the Urban Periphery

Ezra Karger, Economics
Project: The Unequal Expansion of High Schools across the United States: 1850–1951

David Knight, Political Science
Project: Reconceptualizing Youth to Early Adulthood in the Era of Mass Incarceration

Darnell Leatherwood, Crown Family School
Project: A National Assessment of School District Variation in Black Student Academic Achievement

Helen Lee, Comparative Human Development
Project: “Fighting Back is as ‘American’ as You Can Get”: A Case Study of Chinese American Youth Collectively Constructing Alternative Racial Narratives

Read the full press release here.

 

In Remembrance: Dan Lortie (1926-2020), Influential Sociologist of Education
Professor Susan Goldin-Meadow was elected in April 2020 to the National Academy of Sciences. Read the press release here. Read more about Professor Goldin Meadow’s work in UChicago News’s discussion of her election to the National Academy here.
Committee on Education Fellow David McMillon, a PhD student in the Harris School of Public Policy, has won a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for 2020 for his proposal to study school disciplinary policy.  David’s challenging and original approach combines dynamic mathematical modeling and empirical evidence to uncover potentially surprising effects of following alternative policies.
Committee on Education Fellow David Knight, a PhD student in Public Policy, has also been awarded a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for 2020 for his proposal to study school disciplinary policy.  David’s current research examines how public policy shapes young people’s sociopolitical development and transitions to adulthood across a variety of unequal settings—namely, criminal punishment, urban schooling, and housing.
Committee on Education Fellow Eos Trinidad won the annual Philippine National Book Awards’ 2019 Best Book on Professions. Read more here.
Committee on Education faculty members Stephen Raudenbush, Susan Levine, and Lisa Rosen recently spoke at a conference on the early childhood learning environment hosted by the University of Chicago Center in Hong Kong. Read more here.
  • 2019 AERA Division Outstanding Dissertation Award goes to Xu Qin (Ph.D., 2018, Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago) for her dissertation “Causal Mediation Analysis in Multisite Trials with an Evaluation of the Job Corps Program.” Click here to read more.
  • Professor Susan Goldin-Meadow to give 2019 McGovern Lecture at American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting. Click here to read more.