Research & Projects
Paoyi and Robin enjoying a “work session” at the Jersey shore
“Meeting Students Where They Are: Forging a Better Understanding of Part-time student enrollment patterns at CUNY’s Community Colleges”, PSC-CUNY grant (Spring-Fall 2025)
I’m interested in looking at enrollment patterns of First time in college community college students that may signal that students would have preferred to take 9 credits, but needed 12 credits so they could be TAP eligible. These students had been considered full time students and often incentivized to take even additional credits. My query is whether the data may tell a different story-- that these students were likely full time at 12 credits primarily so they could get the TAP aid, and so attempted more credits than they earned on a consistent basis. Now that there is part-time TAP (effective Fall 2022) it will be curious how this shapes their enrollment patterns moving forward.
Project Evaluator, CCNY-MK Partnership for Cancer Research, Education and Community Outreach, NIH/NCI grant. (2025-2029)
https://ccnymsk-partnership.ccny.cuny.edu/
Project Evaluator for NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program, “NanoBioNYC” 2022-2027, Advanced Science Research Center, Graduate Center, City University of New York
“Under the Pandemic Looking-Glass: How the Impact of COVID-19 Magnifies the Economic, Academic, and Emotional Challenges for Community College Students” with Paoyi Huang, PSC-CUNY grant.
This project aims to use mixed research methods to investigate the way in which the COVID-19 pandemic affects community college students’ college-going experiences and exacerbates the many challenges students confront prior to the pandemic. The study will be built upon the three preliminary surveys Paoyi and Robin conducted in both Spring and Fall 2020. We believe this research can offer substantial and meaningful evidence to help institutional agents—administrators, staff, and faculty alike, to appreciate the myriad, and often invisible, difficulties community college students experience. We are also hopeful that a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the obstacles students face will facilitate institutions to develop suitable policies and provide adequate assistances that our students need.
CUNY Research Project on Academic Momentum
From 2011-2013, Robin served as Project Director for the CUNY Research Project on Academic Momentum. This project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, sought to test Clifford Adelman’s theory of Early Academic Momentum in the Community College setting. The research conducted Randomized Control Trial Experiments looking at the effects of three different types of academic interventions on first year community college students in CUNY, as well as conducted 30 in depth interviews with study participants. This research features prominently in my forthcoming book, The Costs of Completion: Student Success in Community College (Johns Hopkins University Press).
Battery Park City User Study (2017-2018)
Along with a colleague, Michele Ronda (Coordinator of BMCC’s Criminal Justice Program), Robin conducted a user study of Battery Park City Parks. We trained over 50 current and former BMCC students in conducting systematic counting and survey interviews, SPSS coding and data analysis, as well as write up ethnographic observations. This project culminated in the Battery Park City Authority Parks User Count and Study 2017-2018.
