Dr. Elizabeth Rivera Rodas Receives $60,000 Fellowship from the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP)

Dr. Elizabeth Rivera Rodas, Assistant Professor in the Educational Foundations Department, was recently selected as an Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) Emerging Poverty Scholar funded by the JPB Foundation. The fellowship will expand her work on the structural barriers that affect Latinx math achievement and STEM involvement.

IRP’s Emerging Poverty Scholars Fellowships provide exceptional junior scholars from underrepresented racial and ethnic populations with flexible funding over a two-year award period.

Additionally, beyond providing Fellows with flexible funding and opportunities for expanding their networks and receiving feedback on their research and career trajectories, the program intends to establish long-term relationships between Fellows and other poverty scholars, which may lead to future collaborations.

As an economist of education, Rivera Rodas’s scholarly interests involve the economics of urban education, residential and school segregation, and structural educational inequities by race and ethnicity. Her current research, which is supported by a two-year American Educational Research Association–National Science Foundation Research Grant, explores the structural barriers that contribute to Latinx mathematics achievement. The projects she will advance as an Emerging Poverty Scholar extend this research and investigate the structural and intentional processes within mathematics tracking and the impact on postsecondary enrollment and completion in STEM fields for Latinx high school students.