At the Student Success Equity Research Center, where I was the inaugural Faculty Director, we collaborated with faculty, students, and staff to conduct research in support of educational equity and undergraduate student success at UCSC. I have studied the role of Learning Support Services in promoting student achievement, the ways that university actors perceive student success metrics and outcomes, and the effects of a university-based economic stability program supports students’ retention and educational outcomes.  I have also explored the ways that a basic needs program, Slug Support, helps students to succeed in their courses and stay enrolled at UC Santa Cruz. Enrolling in SNAP (food stamps) is especially important for retention, as I wrote in this Public Policy Institute of California blog post. I have written about conceptions of student success from a university practitioner perspective and why alternative metrics of success are important to their work.

My most recent work focuses on how community initiated student engaged research (CISER) is key to students’ learning experiences and improves the quality of research. I have written about embedding community-engaged research into the classroom and also the important role of undergraduates as a “public” in public sociology.

Key Publications:

Balzer Carr, Brandon and Rebecca A. London. (2021). “Healthy, Housed, and Well-Fed: Exploring Basic Needs Support Programming in the Context of University Student Success.” AERA Open 6(4): 2332858420972619.

Greenberg, Miriam, Rebecca A. London and Steven McKay. (2021). “’First Publics’ as Knowledge Producers: Integrating Students into Organic Public Sociology,” in Routledge International Handbook of Public Sociology, ed. Hossfield, Leslie, Routledge.

Greenberg, Miriam, Rebecca A. London, and Steven C. McKay. (2020). “Community-Initiated Student-Engaged Research: Expanding Undergraduate Teaching and Learning through Public Sociology.” Teaching Sociology 48, no. 1 (2020): 13-27.

Greenberg, Miriam, Rebecca London, and Steve McKay. (2019). “The Vitality of Students for Public Sociology.” Contexts 18(4): 60-60.

Chang, Ethan, Rebecca A. London, and Samara S. Foster. (2019). “Reimagining Student Success: Equity-Oriented Responses to Traditional Notions of Success.” Innovative Higher Education 44(6): 481-496.

Balzer Carr, Brandon, and Rebecca A. London. (2019). “The Role of Learning Support Services in University Students’ Educational Outcomes.” Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 21(1): 78-104.