ELLI is a collaborative research group from Michigan State University and Texas A&M University.
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- We mentor undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of disciplines to enhance young children’s language and literacy development.
- Using an apprenticeship model, we provide many opportunities to conduct research with our team nationally and internationally.
- We value the input of practitioners in the field and work to make sure that our assessments and interventions fit the needs of the communities where we work.
Meet the team of researchers that make up the ELLI Research Group

Lori Skibbe, PhD
Faculty, Michigan State University
Interests: Literacy and Language Development, Assessment, Self-Regulation
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Ryan Bowles, PhD
Faculty, Michigan State University
Interests: Measurement and Assessment Development, Early Literacy and Language Development
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Hope Gerde, Ph.D.
Faculty, Texas A&M
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Nicholas E. Waters, M.S.
Research Associate, Michigan State University
Interests: Self-regulation and academic development, socioeconomic status, parenting

Sammy F. Ahmed, Ph.D.
IES Postdoctoral Fellow, Michigan State University
Interests: Executive Function, Early Schooling, Measurement Development, Longitudinal Methodology, Data Science
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Burcu Ozkum
Graduate Student, Michigan State University
Interests: Digital media, technology, early language and literacy development

Yatma Diop
Graduate Student, Michigan State University
Interests: Parent-child interactions in Senegal
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Arianna Pikus
Graduate Student, Michigan State University
Interests: Science education and nature-based learning

Kyla McRoy
Graduate Student, Michigan State University
Interests: Self-regulation development and best practices

Tiantian Sun
Graduate Student, Michigan State University
Interests: Early language and literacy development for children who are dual language learners and those with disabilities.

Ellen Searle
Graduate Student, Michigan State University
Interests: Home literacy environment of young children with disabilities

Haruka Konishi
Alumni
The ELLI lab provided amazing support, space, and the trust [that] helped me develop as the scholar and teacher educator that I am today.

Janelle Montroy
Alumni
Research interests: academic achievement, executive function, measurement, STEM curricula

Dr. Sarah Goodwin
Alumni
My lab experiences allowed me to build skills to manage personnel, and I also improved my proficiency in R programming language for statistics and data tasks. I genuinely learned something new every day on the job.