Research News

Cho receives prestigious National Academy of Education fellowship award

Sun-Joo Cho, assistant professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development, has been named a 2013 National Academy of Education (NAE)/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow.

Sun Joo Cho / Vanderbilt University

The fellowship program, which is administered by the NAE and funded by a grant from the Spencer Foundation, supports early career scholars working in critical areas of education research. Cho is one of 20 fellows selected nationally from a competitive pool of nearly 300 scholars. The $55,000 award will allow her to pursue her research interests through the summer of 2015.

Cho’s funded study is titled “Evaluating Educational Programs with a New Item Response Theory Perspective.” Her research involves modeling of individual differences within complex data structures using generalized latent variable models. Specifically she concentrates on the development and application of item response models and their estimation methods.

Cho holds a doctorate in educational measurement and statistics from the University of Georgia and a master’s in statistics and bachelor’s in education from Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. Prior to joining the Vanderbilt faculty, she held a position as a postdoctoral scholar at University of California, Berkeley.

Peabody College has been named the No. 1 graduate school of education in the nation for the fifth consecutive year by U.S. News & World Report. For more information about the college, visit peabody.vanderbilt.edu.

written by Seth Robertson