Current Ph.D. Students

Early Childhood Care and Education; Preschoolers' Academic Development; Head Start Program Evaluation

Victoria (Vicki) is a third-year PhD student in the Applied Developmental Psychology program under the mentorship of Drs. Sabine Doebel and Adam Winsler. She graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020 with a B.S. in Psychology. Prior to joining George Mason, she completed a Postbac IRTA Fellowship in a clinical neuroimaging lab at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and subsequently spent a year working as a research assistant under Dr. Brenda Jones Harden at the University of Maryland collecting and disseminating child assessment data for Educare DC's longitudinal program evaluation.

Vicki is dedicated to bridging the gap between research and practice in early childhood care and education contexts. Broadly, her research interests center on the interrelations between early adversity (e.g., poverty), environmental factors (e.g., familial and neighborhood dynamics), and academic development in preschoolers and Head Start/Early Head Start attendees. Her current research examines factors such as mobility and school quality in moderating long-term outcomes of attending an early childhood program. In her free time, Vicki is often at the gym powerlifting.