Emily Rauscher is an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at Brown University and faculty affiliate of the Population Studies and Training Center, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, and the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy. She is a sociologist whose work spans sociology, education research, demography, policy, and health policy. She has a solid publication record with over 20 first- or second-author publications in peer-reviewed journals across these disciplines from 2012 – 2020 as a postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor. The extraordinary breadth of her research is outstanding for her career stage. Few scholars ever produce work that is both interdisciplinary and crosses multiple disciplines and fields.
Rauscher is an exceptional scientist who is producing a range of research that integrates disciplinary perspectives, data sources, and levels of analysis are in the finest tradition of where education research and other sciences need to be headed. A common thread throughout much of her research focuses on education research, broadly defined. Her work cuts across the life cycle at both the individual and macro levels as she addresses topics such as infant health and parents education attainment, socialization effects in early education and the primary grades, school funding, transgenerational wealth transfers, and effects of education policy. Rauscher studies the relationship between education and inequality, focusing on specific policies that can increase equality of opportunity by race and socioeconomic status. Rauscher’s research examines intergenerational inequality, which has implications for education, socioeconomic standing, and health. She recently published research using rigorous statistical techniques that suggests that passing a school funding bond increases achievement for low socioeconomic status students, but not for affluent students. Through her research she is creating new knowledge and helping us to understand how social forces can influence school and educational processes.
Rauscher received a small grant from the AERA-NSF Grants Program to study school funding and inequality of educational achievement using large scale Federal data sets. From this work she produced multiple publications in education research and sociology journals. Another line of her research examines how K-12 schools contribute to students’ learning social skills such as how to get along with others and how to talk to teachers and other authority figures. This work also suggests how schools serve as center of some communities. Rauscher has produced additional research on topics such as infant health variations, integrating genetics and social science, children’s conception of social class, historical contexts of economic mobility, and intergenerational financial transfers effect students’ educational attainment. These multiple lines of research and publications illustrate that she is a nimble and interdisciplinary scholar who is making a significant contribution to scientific inquiry.
In addition to her strong body of research that is published in peer-reviewed academic journals, Rauscher has published several policy reports and research briefs on school funding inequality. These reports are largely directed to state and local policymakers and the general public. She also has provided testimony to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Kansas Advisory Committee, Education Funding and Civil Rights in Kansas on education inequality in Kansas. Her work has contributed to the sociology of education and how we understand how schools influence socialization learning in early childhood. Rauscher has contributed to a National Public Radio podcast about the socialization effects of education on children, especially those from low income, rural, and racial minority groups. She has also presented her research in numerous symposia and colloquia at several universities, and organizations. The interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary focus of her research attracts a wide audience which includes school administrators and practitioners, health care clinicians, policy makers, and others interested in understanding and improving life experiences.
