FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

1. When will you be finished with your PhD?

   I don’t know. Hopefully sometime 2024? Update 8/9/2024: Let’s say early 2025.

2. What are you studying?

   I am working on my PhD in Educational Psychology with a focus on Quantitative Methods in Education (QME). I am particularly interested in educational measurement. This is a field that is concerned with the measurement of a person’s knowledge, skills, and abilities using a variety of assessment methods such as standardized tests, surveys, or performance assessments. Ultimately, we want to know that a score or rating is truly reflective of a person’s knowledge. Primarily, psychometrics (an applied field of statistics concerned with quantifying uncertainty in human behavior) is used to explain scores. Though, it is common to use more qualitative approaches as well. I tend to favor a holistic approach that incorporates evidence from both psychometrics and qualtitative methodologies.

   Long story short: data science.

3. What year are you in?

   I think my sixth year? Time is a messy dimension and I prefer not to interact with it.

4. What do you want to do after your PhD?

   I’d love to be a professor focusing my efforts on teaching about educational measurement, move closer to my parents and family, doing research on the side for fun. Realistically. I would still love to be in academia. Tenure track is enticing though I would also enjoy consulting or working at a research center. Alternatively, I am certainly eager to work with public education either at the district, state, or federal level.

   Industry work is currently not my passion but I won’t say never.

5. What do you think about standardized testing?

   It’s complicated.

6. What is your favorite bear?

   The brown bear. Duh.