Dr. Sarai Coba-Rodriguez
Lab PI
Dr. Sarai Coba – Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign. She is program faculty in Human Development and Learning, where she teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses. Dr. Coba’s research aims to answer: How do ecological contexts, individual, and family factors promote the resilience of low-income racial-linguistic group families and children’s school readiness? Challenging deficit perspectives that often characterize diverse families, she uses a family resilience framework that emphasizes families’ strengths, cultural resources, and agency. To present a more complex and dynamic picture of diverse families and the transition to kindergarten, she focuses on the perspectives, experiences, and expectations of all involved in the process, including parents (caregivers), siblings, extended kin, early childhood educators, kindergarten teachers, and children. As a qualitative researcher, Dr. Coba is an expert at conducting in-depth interviews, photo-elicitation interviews, naturalistic participation, and neighborhood observations. She is a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP) and a Faculty Fellow in the Honors College.
In her free time, she enjoys hiking, biking, trying new foods, and spending time with family and friends!
Graduate Research Assistants
Jola Dohrmann
Graduate research assistant
Jola is a doctoral candidate in Educational Psychology in the program of Human Development and Learning at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She earned her Master’s in Early Childhood Education from Erikson Institute in 2020. Jola is a licensed teacher with a Type 04 Certification and Bilingual/ESL endorsement. Her primary research interests are children’s school readiness during the primary years.
Rabia Zahid
Graduate research assistant
Rabia is a doctoral student in the Educational Psychology program at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Rabia is interested in researching how individual and environmental factors like intergenerational transmission of poverty and ecological context influence the academic achievement of school-aged children from low-income ethnic minority backgrounds.
Camryn Christensen
Camryn is a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) working on a master’s in early childhood special education. She earned her bachelor’s degree in human development and Learning from UIC. Camryn has spent time working as an assistant and lead preschool teacher. Her current research interests surround preschool-aged children’s social-emotional development during and as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and how caregiver relationships strengthen self-confidence in preschool-aged children.
