People – iSNAP: Internet School Neighborhood Assessment Protocol

Primary Investigators

Dana Charles McCoy is an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). Her work focuses on understanding the ways that poverty-related risk factors in children’s home, school, and neighborhood environments affect the development of their cognitive and socioemotional skills in early childhood. She is also interested in the development, refinement, and evaluation of early intervention programs designed to promote positive development and resilience in young children, particularly in terms of their self-regulation and executive function. McCoy’s research is centered in both domestic and international contexts, including Brazil, Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia. She has a particular interest in interdisciplinary theory, causal methodology, and ecologically valid measurement.

Before joining the HGSE faculty, McCoy served as an NICHD National Research Service Award post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Center on the Developing Child. She graduated with an A.B. in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Dartmouth College and received her Ph.D. in Applied Psychology with a concentration in Quantitative Analysis from New York University. McCoy’s work has been published in journals such as Developmental Psychology, Child Development, Pediatrics, and The Lancet. She has presented her work to audiences around the world, including the WHO, UNICEF, and the World Bank.

Dr. Terri J. Sabol

Terri J. Sabol’s research focuses on the individual and environmental factors that lead to healthy child development, with a particular emphasis on schools and families. She applies developmental theory, psychological measurement and advanced quantitative methods to pressing social policy issues that affect low-income children and families. In particular, she focuses on two key policy areas: (1) assessing and improving early childhood education; and (2) increasing families’ human capital, including parent education, employment, and income. The broad goal of her research is to generate dynamic theories of change, measure complex social processes, and analyze data with advanced statistical techniques to produce innovative, functional scholarship aimed at improving the lives of children living with economic hardship.

Prior to entering graduate school, Terri Sabol was a first-grade teacher in Chicago through the Teach for America program. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Development Science from the University of Virginia and was postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research. She is currently a Faculty Associate for the Institute for Policy Research. She is also the director the Development, Early Education, and Policy (DEEP) lab.

Emily C. Hanno

Emily Hanno is a doctoral candidate in Education Policy and Program Evaluation at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research interests stand at the intersection of quantitative policy analysis and the study of human development. She is broadly interested in exploring how specific teacher practices in early childhood settings shape child outcomes, as well as how these teacher actions are influenced by in- and out-of-school factors. In particular, her work has examined the efficacy of professional development programs for early childhood educators with the ultimate goal of informing policies aimed at improving children’s experiences in early education programs.

Prior to beginning doctoral studies, Emily taught in a Head Start program in Houston, Texas and then served as an instructional coach for early career teachers in the city. Emily holds a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from Tufts University and a Master’s degree in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University.