Maithreyi Gopalan , Ph.D.

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor in the Education Policy Studies Department at The Pennsylvania State University (beginning August 2018). I recently received my Ph.D. from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington. I have a Masters in Economics and have completed a doctoral minor from the IU Psychological and Brain Sciences Department. Broadly, I am interested in bringing psychological insights to bear on applied social and educational policy issues. My research has been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. In my dissertation, I examine the causes and consequences of racial (and socioeconomic) disparities in students' non-cognitive educational outcomes across the Pre-k-16 educational spectrum in the US using quasi-experimental and field experimental methods. Specifically, my dissertation consists of three studies, each exploring a different facet of inequality in non-cognitive outcomes at three different stages in education—pre-kindergarten, K-12, and college.