2008-09 Cohort

Wei-ting Chen

Wei-ting, an IES Affiliate, received her B.A. in political science and sociology from the University of California at Davis in 2005.  While at UC Davis, Wei-ting completed an honors thesis examining the effects of California's welfare reform programs on mothers and their children.  Prior to coming to Johns Hopkins, she worked at an education reform organization where she focused on leadership and organizational development in inner city charter schools.  Her research interest is in the intersection of children, education and welfare, more specifically, she plans to examine achievement outcomes of children who grow up in welfare-dependent households.  

Monica Hetrick

Monica is an IES predoctoral fellow in the School of Education. After graduating with a B.A. in Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 2002, Monica taught in elementary school in Baltimore City for two years and middle school science in Anne Arundel County for four years. During this time she earned a Masters in Teaching as well as a certificate in Gifted Education from Johns Hopkins. She is currently pursuing her Doctorate of Education in the Department of Teacher Development and Leadership. Her main research interests are student motivation and gifted education, specifically relating to the achievement gap and the STEM pipeline.

Robert Nathenson

Robert completed a bachelor’s degree in history in 2005 from Washington University in St. Louis.  His thesis examined the efforts of aid organizations to improve the living and working conditions of blacks in St. Louis between the World Wars.  He pursued a Master’s degree in sociology from the University of Oxford, graduating in 2006.  This time his thesis focused on black-white occupational stratification in the public and private sectors in England, the United States, and Canada.  Afterwards he moved to Boston and began work at a law firm.  In his spare time he volunteered at The Algebra Project, a non-profit designed to improve the learning experience of minority youth by creating lesson plans more relevant to the youths’ daily lives.  The overarching interest inherent in his academic and volunteer work is social stratification, whether labor market outcomes or educational opportunities.  His main aim with the IES fellowship is to gain the training and knowledge necessary to broadly evaluate how educational institutions affect individuals’ life-course outcomes and how they can be reformed so as to improve these individuals’ life chances.

Stephanie Slates

After graduating from Harvard University in 2002 with a B.A. in history, Stephanie moved to New Orleans and taught fourth grade for two years through Teach For America.   Following teaching, she coordinated college students' service placements in local public schools with Tulane University's Office of Service Learning.   She later worked as a Program Design Specialist with Teach For America's national Teacher Preparation Team, where she designed tools and curriculum used by all new teachers during their 2006 summer training.  Most recently, she was the Project Manager on the team that launched New Leaders for New Schools, a nonprofit that recruits, trains, and supports urban school principals, in New Orleans.  She received a master’s degree in Urban Studies from the University of New Orleans in 2008.  As an IES fellow, she is interested in researching how housing policy and residential mobility impact children’s educational attainment in low-income families.

Ben Zablotsky

Ben Zablotsky is a doctoral student in the Department of  Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.  He is a graduate of Tufts University (2004) where he double majored in Classical Studies and Biopsychology.  After earning his degree, Mr. Zablotsky spent three years as an Associate in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School where he worked on several psychiatric medication trials focused on treating both children and adults with severe mental disorders.  It was during this time that he developed an appreciation for research design, with a particular focus of interventional methods, and a passion for working with child populations.

Ben's interests include implementing appropriate preventive interventions for children and adolescents in school and community settings who are at-risk for developing a mental illness.  He also hopes to further investigate the physiologic, environmental and sociological factors that have the potential to protect or predict psychopathology within any given population, with a particular focus on behavioral disorders and pervasive developmental disorders.

Cohort 2009-13

Jennifer Carinci

Jennifer is a trainee in Teacher Development and Leadership with the School of Education.  Since arriving in Baltimore in 2001, Jennifer has worked for many community organizations, museums, and schools, serving students ages 6-18 and supervising adults as a leader, mentor, and selector.  Through her service as an Ambassador and Selector for The Baltimore City Teaching Residency, she is responsible for evaluating and recommending candidates for teaching positions in the Baltimore City Public School System.  As an award winning Baltimore City art teacher with experience supervising interns, hiring new teachers, and setting high academic standards for her students and herself, she is equipped to excel as a training fellow.  Teaching art at Lombard Middle and ACCE High School, attending private school, working for after-school and summer non-profits, selecting and mentoring new hires for Baltimore City, and consulting for The Maryland Writing Project, she is acutely aware of the many challenges and successes in education today.

She earned her MSED from Johns Hopkins while being a first and second year teacher receiving  proficient evaluations, taking other mentoring and certification courses, working for BCTR, and supervising interns.  Jennifer’s strong academic record includes a receipt of the Sydney Lake Leadership Award, the highest award given to a graduating senior, from Maryland Institute College of Art.  She is excited to have the opportunity and the experience to combine her passions through educational research and the IES Training Program. Arts integration, brain research, presenting elegant problems, and connections between writing and art are some of the ideas she has explored through class papers, classroom experimentation, professional developments, or readings.

Barbara Condliffe

Barbara is an IES trainee fellow in Sociology.  After she graduated from Bowdoin with a B.A. in English and Women’s studies she went on to earn her MS in Education from Brooklyn College.  Her first experience with scholarly research came when she worked at The Institute for Education, Law and Policy at Rutgers School of Law her junior year in college. At Bowdoin College, she explored critical theories of education.  After college, she worked for the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) in Washington, D.C. conducting literature reviews, data analysis, and interviews with policy makers on issues related to child welfare and mental health.  In 2005, she was admitted to the New York City Teaching Fellows. 

She taught high school English at the School for Democracy and Leadership for four years.  She also served as an eleventh grade team leader and English Department Chair.  In 2007, Barbara was awarded a Teachers Network Leadership Institute MetLife Fellowship.  As a fellow, she examined how New York City Department of Education’s accountability policies affect teachers and students.  Her research was selected for publication on the Teachers Network web site and has been used to write the Teachers Network education platform for the mayoral candidates in the coming election.  Her research goals include uncovering the organizational and affective factors that influence attrition rates among various sub-groups of teachers in high-need schools. 

Matt Messel

Through pursuing a career in Sociology, Matt will learn how social institutions influence adolescent development and well-being. Specifically, he will examine the impact of families, the public school system and religious institutions on young individuals. As an IES trainee, Matt will address interactions between education outcomes and the home and community lives of adolescents in his research. While he will focus on developing his quantitative and evaluative skills, Matt also hopes to conduct mixed methods research during his pre-doctoral tenure. Matt graduated from Texas Christian University (TCU) with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Sociology and Political Science in 2009. While at TCU, he conducted research concerning post-secondary education as an intern for the Office of Institutional Research and international education policy through the Political Science Department. Matt lives with his family in Omaha, Nebraska.

Maya Nadison

An IES trainee fellow in Mental Health, Maya completed her MHS in the Department of Mental Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.  She will research the synergy between mental health, education, and communication in order to design, implement, and evaluate interventions with the potential to produce positive outcomes for students.  Her research interest relates to the design and evaluation of school and community-based mental health interventions focused on the prevention of risk behaviors across cultures.  Interested in early prevention and intervention of mental problems, she was awarded a research grant from Northwestern University in 2005, to design a school-based public outreach intervention using puppetry to tackle the problem of childhood bullying.  She will help to lead educational practices that produce positive outcomes for students and their communities while exploring the potential of combining mental health interventions with education methodologies and health communication strategies.

Christine Ramsey

Christine is an IES trainee fellow in Public Health.  She graduated from Syracuse University with a B.S. in Psychology in 2004 and attended Drexel University for two years with an emphasis in Chemical Engineering.  She is currently enrolled in the School of Public Health in mental health.  She has spent the last three years identifying early and midlife mental health risk factors for disease and decline in late life.  Motivated to do preventative research in childhood and adolescent population, she is particularly interested in role of early life stressors, neurocognitive skills and emotional regulatory functions, and response to preventative interventions.  Her research goals are to improve cognitive, social, and academic outcomes for at risk children and adolescents in Baltimore City public schools.  Christine is an active runner.  She recently finished 12th for women and 4th in the US (2:44:37) (6:17/mile pace) for the NYC marathon held November 1, 2009.

Bess Rose

A Baltimore native, Bess Rose is a doctoral student in the Department of Teacher Development and Leadership at the School of Education and an IES Affiliate. One of her first experiences working in educational research was with the Beginning School Study in the Department of Sociology while she was an undergraduate at Hopkins. After graduating, she went on to do an M.A. in Comparative Literature (Critical Theory) at the University of Buffalo. Most recently, she completed an M.Ed. in Measurement and Evaluation at Western Governors University and was the Research and Evaluation Coordinator for the Division of Student, Family, and School Support at the MD State Department of Education prior to returning to school full-time. Her research interests include the rhetoric, practices and beliefs around the “data-driven decision making” paradigm, especially at the state level, and the effects of federal and state funding and policies on student success, especially for low-income children and students attending low-performing schools.

Siri Warkentien

Siri is an IES trainee fellow in Sociology. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she earned a B.A. in Statistics and a BM in Cello Performance in 2003. Prior to coming to Johns Hopkins, she spent several years at the Education Statistics Services Institute where she wrote and reviewed issue briefs for the National Center for Education Statistics’ Data Development Program. She also gained experience analyzing national education survey data. In addition, she completed graduate coursework at the University of Maryland College Park with classes in alternative education and quantitative research methods. She is interested in the broad areas of inequality and urban education and the collaborative efforts between research universities and school districts.

Christina Yim

Christina is a fellow in the School of Education’s Teacher Development and Leadership.  She graduated from the University of Georgia with B.A. in Studio Art and a M.Ed. in Gifted and Creative Education in 2007.  She is also an alumni of The Advanced Academy of Georgia, an early entrance to college program, and has been working with gifted students through Duke TIP since 2008.  Her professional goals include researching and advocating early entry to college. Her research will focus on the early entrance practices that have the capacity to lower dropout rates, reduce student underachievement and offer students greater educational opportunities.

Jessika Zmuda

Jessika is a doctoral student in the Department of Mental Health.  She is a graduate of Smith College (2001) where she majored in Comparative Literature with a focus on Russian and Mandarin Chinese languages and literatures.  After working for six years in California with several education, health, and mental health focused, youth-serving agencies, she obtained her Master of Public Health with a concentration in community health and human development from JHU’s School of Public Health (2008).  Her professional goal is to develop and help disseminate effective school-based, preventive interventions that can reduce disparities in youth outcomes among low-income, diverse public school students, with a particular focus on immigrant populations.  Jessika is eager to receive more advanced research training which will provide her with the skills to develop school-based preventive interventions and conduct applied research to improve outcomes for families and young people in under-resourced communities.