Graduate Student Association (GSA)

Lindsey Insco received her Bachelor's in chemistry from Xavier University in 2022 and her Master's in criminal justice from the University of Cincinnati in 2023. Lindsey is currently a doctoral student of criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests include life course criminology, drug overdoses, and, more generally, terrorism. 

Esnart is an international doctoral student in the college of education.  Her program concentration is  education community-based action research. Her research interests revolve around the intersection of early childhood education, emergency education, and the rights of girls.

Amota Ataneka is a doctoral researcher supervised by Professor Benjamin Kelcey. His work focuses on the longstanding challenge of incorporating latent factors—unseen constructs like depression, anxiety, resilience, or community support—into causal inference frameworks. Because latent variables are only observed indirectly through imperfect indicators, most existing approaches such as regression, SEMs, or SAM methods struggle either with measurement error or with the need to correctly specify complex relationships in advance. Machine learning models, while powerful, are not designed to handle latent variables at all. Amota is developing new algorithms to bridge this gap by integrating principles from machine learning, causal inference, and latent variable modeling so that both measurement error and model misspecification can be addressed simultaneously. His goal is to create more reliable tools for estimating causal effects in fields where hidden constructs drive real outcomes, including psychology, education, medicine, and the social and environmental sciences.

Amota also contributes to the development of methods and tools for complex randomized study designs (a gold standard design for studying cause-and-effects) such as cluster randomized trials (CRTs), multisite design, partially nested CRTs, and Multiple-Group Individually-Randomized Group Trials. Amota regularly presents his research work at the American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Evaluation Association, and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE).

Catherine is a doctoral student in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology (2016) and a Master’s in Applied Behavioral Science with a concentration in criminal justice (2020) from Wright State University. Her research interests lie in corrections specifically focusing on offender rehabilitation, prisoner reentry, in-prison programming, and specialty courts.

Tiffany is a highly motivated and experienced educator passionate about early childhood education. She is currently a doctoral student in Educational Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where she is concentrating in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education. Tiffany holds undergraduate degrees in Early Childhood and Inclusive Early Childhood Education and a master's degree in Curriculum & Instruction with a focus on STEM Learning. Her research interests include mathematics and science education, STEM/STEAM learning, and play-based learning.