Alumna Tarana Khan Joins PBS SoCal/Public Media Group of Southern California

Ph.D. Alumna Tarana Khan is joining PBS SoCal and Public Media Group of Southern California as their Education Research and Evaluation Analyst. PBS SoCal tells stories that matter and supports an informed and engaged Southern California community.
 
In her new role, Dr. Khan will collaborate closely with departmental colleagues to create a culture of impact-driven education programs that are strategically aligned with the Education Department’s mission. PBS SoCal’s Family Math Initiative aims to reach more than 6,000 Compton parents, children, and community members and encourage early exposure to math to improve long term educational outcomes. The Family Math Initiative aims to close the achievement gap for young learners from low-income households by empowering families to fully integrate themselves into their children’s learning community and increasing math proficiency and kindergarten readiness. Khan will develop and implement evaluation strategies that demonstrate the impact of the Family Math project by co-designing and managing program evaluation, research, and analysis to collect actionable data that proves impact. 
 
Khan received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. After graduation, she spent a year working at Disney’s MediaScience Labs conducting multi-platform user studies for major television networks.
 
During graduate school, Khan was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She designed and implemented a longitudinal study with undergraduates assessing change in students’ beliefs about their intelligence mindsets, causal performance attributions, and academic expectancies and values. Her dissertation shed light on how educators can further promote supportive learning environments by tapping into the beliefs that students have about their intelligence and course engagement.
 
During the final year of her doctoral program, Khan completed an internship at EvalCorp, an applied research and consulting firm. In her role as a Research Analyst, she analyzed programmatic outcome data and designed reports on key findings for initiatives and decision-making of nonprofit organizations and government agencies.
 
Khan received her Ph.D. in Education in with a specialization in Human Development in Context. She was advised by Distinguished Professor Jacquelynne Eccles.