Meet the CFL Researchers...
"Be careful what you teach. It may interfere with what they are learning." –Magda Gerber, Hungarian-American child therapist, infant specialist, and early childhood educator.
Heather L. Horsley, PhD is a former early childhood educator who transitioned to teaching in higher education settings. She is a life-long advocate for early learning programs and respects the complex work of administrators, teachers, and support staff serving families with young children.
Currently she leads the study of DFSS Chicago’s expansion of Early Head Start Child Care Partnerships. Her broader research interests include educational equity, leadership development, and improvement and utilization-focused evaluation methods. In addition to teaching and research, Horsley also works with Chicago youth in various grassroots capacities.
Karen Fong, BA is a doctoral student in Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment at University of Illinois at Chicago. She is also a graduate research assistant at the Center For Literacy. Prior to joining UIC, Karen worked in community-based organizations in New York City where she provided youth, counseling, and HIV/AIDS services. Currently, she is interested in applying quantitative methods to unpack social trends and problems. Her research interests are in test fairness and designing new tools to measure psychological traits and social experiences. Karen holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Hunter College of the City University of New York.
Sunah Chung, BA is a doctoral student in Curriculum and Instruction at University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a graduate research assistant at the Center For Literacy. Her work at the center focuses on quantitative evaluations of ongoing projects, including Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships (EHSCCP). Prior to studying UIC, she worked at high schools as a teacher, and government affiliation (KIPA) regarding children’s education on intellectual property in South Korea. Currently, her research interests are textual and visual representations of topics in children’s literature with diverse perspectives of socially constructed identities, ethnicity, and gender.
Andrea Vaughan, BA is a University of Illinois at Chicago doctoral student in Literacy, Language and Culture. Prior to her doctoral studies, she was an ran the after-school tutoring program at 826LA, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center in Los Angeles, CA. Vaughan currently works on a number of research projects related to early childhood and elementary education, and she is a member of the Center for Literacy research team evaluating DFSS Chicago’s expansion of Early Head Start Child Care Partnerships. Her broader research interests include bi- and multilingualism, writing, and young people’s out-of-school literacies.
