Three faculty members in the University of Delaware College of Education and Human Development have received research grants from the Spencer Foundation. The Small Research Grants program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets up to $50,000 for projects ranging from one to five years.

Lauren Bailes, assistant professor in the School of Education, has received a grant to study and systematize a coaching intervention for Delaware’s novice principals in partner districts and to investigate the principals’ perceptions of an updated evaluation tool before and after an individualized coaching intervention. This study will advance the research on principal evaluation.

Zachary Collier, assistant professor in the School of Education, has received a grant to develop strategies for addressing bias in incomplete data sets in education using machine learning. His work will advance educational research by introducing and implementing state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms for incomplete data analysis for use by researchers who are not well-versed in machine learning.

In 2020, Roderick L. Carey, assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, received a grant to further his Black Boy Mattering Project, a school-based research study of adolescent boys’ perceived mattering in educational contexts. Carey leads a team of graduate and undergraduate student researchers working with boys in individual and group interviews, as well as creative mechanisms, such as artist renderings, to describe their present experiences and imagine mattering differently.

To learn more about CEHD research, visit our CEHD Research pages.

Image caption: Lauren Bailes, Roderick L. Carey, and Zachary Collier received grants from the Spencer Foundation.

Article by Jessica Henderson.