Professional Biography

Rachel Baker is an associate professor in the Policy, Organizations, Leadership, and Systems Division at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Baker studies issues in access to and success in higher education with a focus on students in broad-access institutions. 

Professor Baker’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the Spencer Foundation, and the College Futures Foundation. She serves on the editorial boards of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, AERA Open, and Research in Higher Education and is an Affiliated Scholar at the Wheelhouse Center for Community College Leadership and Research.

Professor Baker was named a 2019 NAEd/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow for her work on curricular complexity in community colleges. She was selected as the 2016 Outstanding Fellow from the Institute of Education Sciences’ Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Programs in the Education Sciences and was awarded a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Dissertation Fellowship.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Professor Baker’s work has one main aim: to increase access, persistence, and success in higher education for traditionally underserved groups. Professor Baker approaches this broad goal through three related lines of research: (a) understanding how various policies affect how community college students make decisions about majors and transfer, (b) describing patterns of college enrollment by race and socio-economic status over time, and (c) measuring, and then intervening to enhance, students’ self-regulatory skills using interaction data from online classes.

Along with partners at three California community colleges, Professor Baker is currently leading a 5-year study funded by the National Science Foundation to examine the effects of cross-enrollment (facilitated enrollment in a university class while enrolled full-time at a community college) on academic aspirations and transfer success. She is also part of a research team examining the effects of instructor professional development on student success in online classes and is leading a group developing measures of curricular complexity in college major requirements.