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.
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We welcome potential students regardless of race, religion, gender identification, sexual orientation, age, or disability status. We believe that having many perspectives strengthens our science.
Meet the team of researchers that make up the ELLI Research Group

Hope Gerde, PhD
Faculty, Texas A&M
Interests: Early Writing Development, Teacher influences of children’s language and literacy development
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Marc Goodrich, PhD
Faculty, Texas A&M
Interests: Development of early oral language and literacy skills among bilingual children

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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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

Luci Davila
Graduate Student, Michigan State University
Interests: Early childhood development, language development, bilingualism/multilingualism

Nicholas E. Waters, PhD
Research Faculty, Michigan State University
Interests: Self-regulation and academic development, socioeconomic status, parenting

Sarah Dunkel-Jackson, PhD
Faculty and Project Coordinator, Michigan State University
Interests: behavior assessment, behavioral interventions, social-emotional regulation, training and development, verbal behavior and communication, and sports.

Janelle Montroy, PhD
Alumni
Interests: academic achievement, executive function, measurement, STEM curricula

Sammy F. Ahmed, PhD
Alumni
Interests: Executive Function, Early Schooling, Measurement Development, Longitudinal Methodology, Data Science
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Sarah Goodwin, PhD
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.

Haruka Konishi, PhD
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.