Christina Ciocca Eller

Christina Ciocca Eller draws on quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the role of higher education organizations in shaping the opportunities and outcomes available to students. Her dissertation, “Organizational Effects on Bachelor’s Degree Completion for the New Majority,” brings together key ideas from stratification, organizations, and cultural sociology to study the interactions between students and colleges. Specifically, she uses longitudinal data from both administrative records and a yearlong interview study of a large, urban, public university system in the U.S. to quantify "college effects," or the independent impact of colleges on student outcomes, as well as the individual and organizational forces that explain those effects. Outside of her dissertation, she has published work on the black/white gap in BA completion in the American Sociological Review and the relationship between course-taking and labor market outcomes in working papers.  She additionally has studied school-to-work transitions in comparative international contexts, including collaborative work published in the American Journal of Sociology. She was named an NAEd/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow for the 2017-2018 academic year. Christina received her bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, where she was valedictorian of the College class, and subsequently received graduate degrees in Women’s Studies and Management Research from the University of Oxford through the Timothy S. Healy Scholarship. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she served as Chief Speechwriter and Communications Director for the president of Georgetown University. She will take up an appointment as an assistant professor of sociology and social studies at Harvard University in July 2019.