Jeffrey R. Klein, Ed.D. (University of Delaware), CRESP Senior Policy Scientist, plays a leadership role in project planning, sample recruitment, instrument development, data collection and management, data analyses, and production of reports and manuscripts for CRESP projects, including NSF-funded programs and evaluations for the Delaware Department of Education. Prior to working at the University of Delaware, he was the Coordinator of Research, Development and Evaluation at Appoquinimink School District. During his time at Appoquinimink, he served as a member of the Delaware Education Support System Advisory, the Academic Framework Working Group and worked alongside many current members of the Personalized Learning Research Alliance. He aided the state in the selection and development of the Longitudinal Data System and the Education Insight Dashboards.

Dr. Klein has over 20 years of experience in using assessment data and leveraging technology to bring about positive outcomes for students. He frequently uses a mixed methods approach in his evaluation design to provide the insight needed to facilitate program improvement.  Dr. Klein has two decades of experience conducting qualitative data collection and analysis.  Specifically, he specializes in conducting focus groups and interviews for teachers, students, and school staff.  His research interests include the development and use of early warning dashboards in education, post-secondary educational attainment, student transience, and using formative evaluation methods for school improvement.

Sue Giancola, Ph.D. is senior associate director of the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP). Prior to joining UD, Dr. Giancola spent over 20 years providing research and evaluation services in education and human services, including 15 years as an independent consultant. Dr. Giancola’s primary area of research involves developing evaluation methodologies that foster the integration of evaluation into program design and to promote the use of evaluation as a continuous improvement component of program implementation.

Dr. Giancola has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in the areas of research methods, management of human services programs, assessment, and evaluation. She is author of Program Evaluation: Embedding Evaluation into Program Design and Development, published by Sage.

Dr. Karpyn is co-director of the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP) and associate professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Delaware. She also is an associate fellow for the Center for Public Health Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining UD, Dr. Karpyn served as the director of research and evaluation at The Food Trust in Philadelphia for 11 years, where her research focused on understanding healthy food purchasing and consumption behavior, especially among children.

Dr. Karpyn is committed to informing policy and practice with rigorous mixed-method research designs. Her current research efforts include the study of food deserts, corner store programs in urban areas and in-store marketing approaches in supermarkets to promote purchase and consumption of healthier options. She is also conducting research to understand the impact a new supermarket has on residents in the surrounding community. She has published widely on topics related to school food, supermarket access, healthy corner stores, and strategies to develop and maintain farmers markets in low income areas. A publication list is available here.

Henry May, Ph.D. is director of CRESP and a professor of education in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Delaware. Prior to joining the UD faculty in 2012, Dr. May spent 14 years as a policy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, including 10 years as a senior researcher and statistician at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). He has served as principal investigator or co-PI on several large-scale studies in educational settings, many of which involved mixed-methods randomized field trials.

As a methodologist, Dr. May specializes in statistical and mixed methods for evaluating the impacts of social interventions and policies. For the past 10 years, Dr. May has taught advanced statistics courses to graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Delaware.