Dr. Alysia Roehrig, Professor of Educational Psychology, joined the faculty at Florida State University in 2003 where she is a faculty member in the Learning and Cognition Program and Chair of the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems. She earned both her Ph.D. and M.A. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Notre Dame. Her research interests focus on issues related to effective teaching, particularly exploring the successes of students labeled at risk for school failure. She primarily focuses on the literacy learning and motivation of students. She has published articles in Elementary School Journal, Journal of Literacy Research, Science, and The Teacher Educator. She edited, along with Drs. Tamara Bertrand Jones and Cheron Davis, a special issue of the Florida Educational Association’s Florida Journal of Educational Research on Education Research for Equity and Social Justice in Florida. She also updated the 7th edition of the widely adopted textbook Educational Psychology by Santrock for McGraw Hill.

Dr. Roehrig is the Co-Principal Investigator and Co-Director of PURPOSE: Partners United for Research Pathways Oriented to Social Justice in Education. PURPOSE is an Institute of Education Sciences funded Pathways to the Education Science Training Program intended to increase the diversity of the doctorate in education. She teaches research methods for the PURPOSE fellows and supports their summer service-learning research practicum at Freedom Schools. She also teaches the following graduate-level courses: Methods of Educational Research, Theories of Learning and Cognition in Instruction, and College Teaching.

Dr. Roehrig helped bring the first Freedom Schools to Tallahassee and serves as the Co-Director of Research for Florida A&M University Developmental Research School (FAMU DRS) Freedom Schools, a Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom Schools® Partner, where she is dedicated to conducting program evaluation that supports the continued success of the camp. FAMU DRS Freedom Schools provides an opportunity for children from Tallahassee’s southside communities to participate in free summer camps focused on reading texts by diverse authors and making a difference in the world. The Freedom Schools program grew out of the work of the historic 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi when free alternative schools were organized during the Civil Rights Movement with the goal of achieving equality. Learn more about Freedom Schools in her chapter, “The fierce urgency of now: CDF Freedom Schools and culturally relevant pedagogy,” which is co-authored with the National Director of CDF Freedom Schools, Dr. Kristal Clemons.