Leigh McLean is an Assistant Research Professor Center for Research in Educational and Social Policy and is PI of the Teachers’ Emotions, Characteristics, and Health (TECH) Lab. Dr. McLean investigates how teachers’ emotions and emotion-related experiences including well-being impact their effectiveness. She is particularly interested in how teachers’ emotions impact their instructional practices, and the role that early-career teachers’ emotions play as they transition into the career. She holds expertise in quantitative, mixed-methods, and longitudinal study design and implementation, multileveled data analysis, and classroom observation.

She is currently leading two federally funded projects: one from the Institute of Education Science exploring how elementary teachers’ feelings and beliefs impact their effectiveness in the content areas they teach, and one from the National Science Foundation exploring how the mentored teaching experience impacts elementary mathematics teachers’ effectiveness during the early career stage.

Mary Culnane is a Policy Scientist at the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP) at the University of Delaware. She holds a master’s degree in evaluation methods and a doctoral degree with a focus on health policy program evaluation from the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration, University of Delaware. She also holds a post-graduate degree in adult primary care from the University of Pennsylvania and a program certificate in epidemiology/biostatistics from Johns Hopkins University. 

Since joining CRESP, Ms. Culnane uses her program evaluation expertise to support and lead evaluations for federal, state, and local government and non-government health and social programs. As an evaluation practitioner, Ms. Culnane works with stakeholders to help focus their evaluation needs and capitalizes on innovative designs and methods to meet those needs. Her primary research interest area includes systems research and understanding how theory can inform evaluation designs.

Before joining CRESP, Ms. Culnane served as a lead and associate investigator for public health prevention programs and clinical trials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Bangkok, Thailand, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland. Activities included designing, implementing, analyzing, evaluating, and disseminating results from domestic and international projects, primarily focused on HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.

Carolyn Hammerschmidt, Ed.D is a Research Associate III, at the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP) at the University of Delaware. Her degrees include a doctoral degree in Educational Leadership at the University of Delaware, a Certificate in Advanced Studies in Educational Administration from SUNY Brockport, a Graduate Certificate in Instructional Design from University of Wisconsin-Stout, and a Master of Arts in Music Education from The Ohio State University

Carolyn’s professional background is in public education, which includes serving as an assistant principal and music teacher in upstate New York. Carolyn also brings an extensive past in volunteering in her local community, including leading advocacy efforts for her local public schools, serving as a founding board member for an education foundation, and serving as the president of her local elementary school PTA.

Sam Van Horne, Ph.D., is a data scientist in the Center for Research in Education & Social Policy at the University of Delaware. Prior to joining CRESP, Dr. Van Horne worked in healthcare, where he conducted research and program evaluation about initiatives designed to support clinician wellbeing. Before his work in healthcare, Dr. Van Horne worked in higher education and conducted research about the effectiveness of educational technologies and interventions that support college student outcomes.