Education and Social Policy: Faculty and Staff

The education and social policy Ph.D. program is a collaborative, interdisciplinary effort between the University of Delaware's College of Education and Human Development and the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration. Faculty members involved with the program are listed below. 

Laura Desimone


Program Director
 302-831-4110

Laura Desimone is professor and director of research in the College of Education and Human Development, with a faculty appointment in the School of Education and an affiliation with the Evaluation, Measurement and Statistics faculty group. She holds a secondary appointment in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration. Before that, she was a professor at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania from 2007 until 2018, with a secondary appointment at the School of Social Policy and Practice. She was an assistant professor at Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University from 2001-2007, and before that was a senior research scientist at the American Institutes for Research and a postdoctoral research associate at Yale University’s Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy. She was also a researcher at RAND in Washington, D.C., and at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Sarah Bruch


Associate Program Director
 608-335-5676

Jasmin Rivers


Graduate Services Coordinator
 302-831-4933
Name/Profile Email Research Focus
Sarah Bruch skbruch@udel.edu Social stratification and inequality; race and ethnicity; social policy and politics; sociology of education; education policy; quantitative methods; political sociology.
Amy Schwartz aeschwar@udel.edu Education policy and urban economics, focusing on the nexus of schools, neighborhoods and public services and the causes and consequences of children’s academic, social and health outcomes.
Joseph Trainor jtrainor@udel.edu Risk, Risk Perception, and Warnings; Organizational management; Justice and Equity; Infrastructure; Community Engagement and Civil Society; Disaster Science; Emergency Management; Quantitative Research; Survey Research; Qualitative research; Mixed methods; Interdisciplinarity, Research and Practice Integration
Name/Profile Email Research Focus
Ann M. Aviles amaviles@udel.edu Equity and Diversity in Families and Communities, Early Childhood and Adolescent Social-Emotional DevelopmentEducation and Social PolicyFamily Policy and Services
Martha Buell mjbuell@udel.edu Early ChildhoodLiteracy and Language, Language Development, Equity and Diversity in Early Childhood, Teacher Preparation and Professional Development, Early Childhood Teacher Preparation, Education and Social Policy, Early Care and Education Policy, Education Leadership and Administration
Roderick L. Carey RLCarey@udel.edu Equity and Diversity in K-12 Education, Education and Social PolicyTeacher Preparation and Professional Development, K-12 Teacher Preparation
Valerie Earnshaw earnshaw@udel.edu Health, Equity and DiversitySocial Determinants of Health
Rena Hallam rhallam@udel.edu Early ChildhoodEducation and Social Policy, Early Care and Education Policy, Teacher Preparation and Professional Development, Early Childhood Teacher Preparation
Jason Hustedt jhustedt@udel.edu Education and Social Policy, Early Care and Education Policy, Early ChildhoodFamily Policy and Services
Allison Karpyn karpyn@udel.edu Social Determinants of Health, Education and Social Policy, Social Policy and Program Evaluation
Barbara Settles settlesb@udel.edu Equity and Diversity in Families and Communities, Early Childhood and Adolescent Social-Emotional DevelopmentEducation and Social PolicyFamily Policy and Services
Anamarie Whitaker awhit@udel.edu Early ChildhoodSocial-Emotional DevelopmentEducation and Social Policy, Early Care and Education Policy