LLaMA Members
​Director
Eunsoo Cho
I am an associate professor of Special Education and Educational Psychology programs in the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education at Michigan State University.
​My research focuses on understanding reading development as it relates to (a) identifying cognitive, motivational, and contextual predictors of reading development, (b) developing and validating methods to accurately measure students’ response to intervention (or growth), and (c) designing and examining efficacy of instructional methods for students with reading difficulties.
Members
Eun Ha Kim
Eun Ha is a PhD student in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology (EPET) program at Michigan State University. Eun Ha's research interests are in promoting adolescents' reading achievement, classroom engagement, and their high school completion specifically for those from language minoritized backgrounds. To enhance language minoritized students' academic success, emotional well-being, and their social emotional development during adolescence, Eun Ha is interested in examining how achievement motivation, teacher-student relationships, and resilience relate to students' educational outcomes. Additionally, she is interested in developing interventions that increase adolescents' reading motivation, reading achievement, and academic resilience.
Cherish Sarmiento
Cherish is currently a second-year doctoral student in Special Education. My broad research interests are geared towards understanding what "scientific literacy" means and how it can be extended to students with language and learning disabilities. Believing that all students can learn science, I am interested in understanding the features of scientific language that act as barriers for student's science achievement and, above all, I'm interested in interventions that help kids overcome those barriers. In my free time, I can be found outdoors. My favorite place to be is in a national park on a back country backpack. Picture: Merlin (dog) and Cherish in a tent on the Pacific Crest Trail in Big Bear, California.
Sheza M. Abubakr
Sheza M. Abubakr earned her bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Teaching from Boston University. Her teaching experiences have been predominantly with students of color in low socioeconomic and urban educational settings. She wants to research innovative ways on improving and fostering reading skills as cognitive and motivational predictors. From an analytical perspective, she is interested in researching how student motivation can boost early literacy skills. The psychological and motivational processes that young children go through in order to develop self-regulation really excites her.