Rebecca Dowling (she/her) joined the Empirical Education team as a Research Manager in 2023. Rebecca holds a Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology with a specialization in educational contexts of development from UMBC. As a graduate student, Rebecca conducted research on the use of board games to improve children’s numeracy skills, contributed to a meta-analysis on adaptive learning platforms, evaluated an early literacy program implemented in a NICU, and completed a dissertation on the impact of classroom quality on Head Start children’s vocabulary knowledge. Rebecca’s coolest job was as a program evaluation intern at Port Discovery Children’s Museum in Baltimore. Prior to joining Empirical Education, Rebecca worked for the Mark USA as an Evaluation Associate leading evaluations on 10+ NSF-funded projects. At Empirical, Rebecca’s work focuses on the evaluation of the EIR-funded “How Are the Children?” social-emotional learning curriculum, as well as an evaluation of WORD Force, a web-based early literacy program.
