Our Team — DF&SRL

Dr. Sarai Coba-Rodriguez

Lab PI

Dr. Sarai Coba-Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a program faculty member in Human Development and Learning, where she teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses. Broadly, Dr. Coba-Rodriguez’s qualitative scholarship 1) challenges misconceptions about Black, Latine, and Korean-American families with young children and 2) reveals families’ experiences as they navigate various educational and medical spaces (e.g., preschool, access to therapies).

As a qualitative researcher, Dr. Coba is an expert at conducting in-depth, semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, and photo-elicitation interviews. She also has experience conducting neighborhood observations. She is a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and a Faculty Fellow in the Honors College at UIC.

In her free time, she enjoys doing anything & everything outdoors!

Graduate Research Assistants

Jola Dohrmann

Graduate research assistant

Jola is a doctoral candidate in Educational Psychology in the program of Human Development and Learning at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She earned her Master’s in Early Childhood Education from Erikson Institute in 2020. Jola is a licensed teacher with a Type 04 Certification and Bilingual/ESL endorsement. Her primary research interests are children’s school readiness during the primary years.

Rabia Zahid

Graduate research assistant

Rabia is a doctoral student in the Educational Psychology program at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Rabia is interested in researching how individual and environmental factors like intergenerational transmission of poverty and ecological context influence the academic achievement of school-aged children from low-income ethnic minority backgrounds.

Amber Ruiz

Graduate research assistant

Amber is a graduate student in the Educational Psychology department at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the recipient of the 2024 Summer Research Opportunity Early Graduate Admissions Fellowship. She is interested in researching early childhood special education, trauma-informed classroom practices, and school readiness. She is a licensed teacher with an LBS1 (Learning Behavior Specialist) certification and a Bilingual Spanish endorsement.

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Haleigh Lusinski

Undergraduate research assistant

Haleigh is a third-year student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She majors in Applied Psychology with a minor in Philosophy. After graduation, she plans on pursuing a master's in clinical mental health counseling, wishing to work with families and couples.