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Elizabeth I. Rivera

B.A. Barnard College, Columbia University
M.S. Hunter College, CUNY
Ph.D. Rutgers University

Elizabeth I. Rivera is an Associate Professor of Quantitative Research Methods in the Department of Educational Foundations at Montclair State University's College of Education and Human Services. She holds a joint Ph.D. in Urban Systems with a concentration in urban educational policy and in economics from Rutgers University - Newark, a M.S. in Social Research from Hunter College, CUNY, and a BA in economics from Barnard College, Columbia University.

Dr. Rivera began her career as an education researcher and completed a two-year data fellowship through Harvard University’s Strategic Data Project in a northern New Jersey urban district. Before beginning her doctoral work, she was the Director of Research, Evaluation and Policy at the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME), where she designed and implemented several evaluation studies of NACME programs and served as a member to the Board of Directors for the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. Her appointment at NACME followed several years of research experience, the last two as a Research Analyst at SRI International's Center for Education Policy in Washington, DC.

Previously, Elizabeth taught in the Sociology and Economics departments at Rutgers, Quantitative Techniques for the Certified Public Managers program out of SPAA, and entry level undergraduate courses at Rutgers Business School's Scholars Training and Enrichment Program.

As an economist of education, Dr. Rivera's scholarly interests involve the economics of urban education, residential and school segregation, and structural educational inequities by race and ethnicity. Her current research, which is supported by a Racial Equity Research Grant from the Spencer Foundation, uses stratification economics to identify some of the structural and intentional processes within mathematics tracking for Latinx high school students and the impact these processes have on postsecondary enrollment, and completion in the STEM fields.