Polanco landed in the Ph.D. in HDFS program, housed in CEHD’s Department of HDFS. There, she learned about Associate Professor Roderick L. Carey’s research on mattering, which seeks to understand how adolescents and young people from underrepresented backgrounds conceptualize their worth and sense of belonging in school settings. 

“Dr. Carey’s work on mattering and the college-going process felt like a perfect fit,” Polanco said. “Mattering, as a construct, really spoke to me because it put language to something I had felt but never knew how to describe. What surprised me most was how much I connected with the students we interviewed, especially the ones who started off quiet or shy. As someone who’s naturally pretty shy myself, it was powerful to watch them open up and share really thoughtful insights about their school experiences.”

Polanco became one of Carey’s first research assistants on the Black Boy Mattering Project, helping him grow the number of participants from 17 boys to over 50 adolescents. She identifies working on this project as one of her most meaningful CEHD experiences, remembering a field trip they took to the Delaware Art Museum in early 2020. There, the boys created self-portraits as part of an art activity. 

“What made this art activity even more special was seeing how much the students opened up through this process,” Polanco said. “One student in particular was really shy when we first started working together. But that day, through his art, I saw a completely different side of him. His creativity was brilliant, and after that experience, I noticed him becoming more and more comfortable in his own skin. He kept showing up, participating in our interviews and letting his voice be heard. Seeing that growth over time was really amazing.”

Studying mattering 

Polanco’s experience as a research assistant laid the foundation for her own research, which centers on the mattering of young students. Her dissertation study piloted and examined the validity of a newly developed survey designed to capture elementary school students’ sense of worth and belonging. This work offered an accessible and developmentally appropriate tool for working with young children. 

“Working with Camila over the past five years has been joyful and incredibly rewarding. She brings both compassion and brilliance to everything she does,” Carey said. “At UD, she developed the skills to engage in deeply humanizing work with children and teachers, while also mastering quantitative tools to explore how schools shape student identities. Her work expands the questions we can ask and how we answer them, offering powerful insights for educators committed to making every student feel that they truly matter.”

In recognition of the value of her work, Polanco received two national dissertation fellowships, including the American Educational Research Association’s Minority Dissertation Fellowship in Education Research and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. 

“I’m really grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to something that I hope helps education stakeholders create school environments where every child feels heard,” Polanco said.

To learn more about CEHD research in student experiences, visit its research webpage.