Pullias’ Julie Posselt wins AERA Early Career Award

We’re proud to announce Assistant Professor Julie Posselt, researcher at USC Rossier’s Pullias Center for Higher Education and nationally-recognized expert on graduate education, has been awarded the prestigious Early Career Award for 2018 by the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

Established to honor an individual in the early stages of his or her career no later than 10 years after receipt of the doctoral degree, the Early Career Award can be granted for study in any field of educational inquiry. The international organization will confer the award for excellence in education research at their annual meeting in New York City on April 15.

“This year’s award winners exemplify commitment to the study and practice of education,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine in a press release. “We are proud to honor their outstanding scholarship and service to the field.”

Posselt’s research program, rooted in sociological and organizational theory, examines institutionalized inequalities in higher education and organizational efforts aimed at reducing inequities and encouraging diversity. She focuses on selective sectors of higher education — graduate education, STEM fields, and elite undergraduate institutions — where longstanding practices and cultural norms are being negotiated to better identify talent and educate students in a changing society.

“Julie’s work is theoretically elegant and methodologically sophisticated,” said William Tierney, co-director of the Pullias Center. “She exemplifies the critical importance of using research to bring about informed change in public policy and on campuses.”

Posselt’s book, Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping (Harvard Univ Press, 2016), was the first major study of faculty decision making in graduate admissions and was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. It sheds light on some of the problems with typical graduate school admissions practices and recommends holistic methods for evaluating would-be students. Her current research, funded by three grants from the National Science Foundation, is examining the roles of faculty practice and disciplinary cultures in creating barriers to and resources for equity in STEM graduate education. She was recently named the project’s advisor and assessment lead for a team of researchers from USC, UC Davis, and UCLA that received a $1.2 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a project to increase equity in graduate admissions.

“This is an incredible honor for me, and a real validation of graduate education as a worthy focus for educational researchers,” said Posselt.