I joined the faculty at LSU after I received my Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the Pennsylvania State University in 2009.  I am a sociologist and social demographer with broad interests rooted in the production and reproduction of social stratification and substantively focused on families, child and adolescent well-being, education, and public policy.  Some of my current research utilizes NLSY data to examine trajectories of children’s living arrangements from birth through adolescence.  Using stress and life course frameworks, I explore how different family structure trajectories are associated with various indicators of well-being in adolescence.  The project contributes to extant knowledge about the relationship between family structure and child outcomes by taking American children’s entire family histories into account rather than focusing on a single point in time.  My work has been published in Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Science Quarterly, Journal of Family Issues, and Population Research and Policy Review.