Kathryn Kroeper, Ph.D.
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Dr. Kathryn Kroeper joined the Sacred Heart University faculty in fall 2022. Before that, she was employed as a postdoctoral fellow at The Ohio State University. Dr. Kroeper loves teaching and aims to create growth mindset classroom cultures, where her students are reminded of their high potential, feel comfortable making and learning from mistakes and are supported.
In her free time, Kathryn enjoys going on adventures with her family, playing board games, ballroom dancing, reading and watching good television.
Degrees & Certifications
- Ph.D., Indiana University, Bloomington (2020)
- BA, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (2012)
Teaching Responsibilities
- Social Psychology
- Political Psychology
Awards & Fellowships
- President’s Postdoctoral Scholars Fellowship, sponsored by The Ohio State University
- Inclusive Mathematics Environments (IME) Early Career Fellowship, sponsored by the Mindset Scholars Network & Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Graduate Research Fellowship, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF)
Research Interests & Grants
The social identities that are important to us (e.g., our race, gender, sexuality) greatly impact our lives. These identities frame our experiences, shape the opportunities we’re afforded (or not afforded), and influence how others perceive and interact with us.
In her research, Dr. Kroeper investigates how social identity shapes our social realities, and she leverages this understanding to identify inequities between members of socially advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Then, she seeks to eliminate these inequities through designing, implementing, and evaluating social psychological interventions. She currently has three main lines of research. First, she studies how individuals with socially advantaged identities cope with threats to their advantaged status and ways to defuse this defensiveness. Second, she develops and validates measures of social identity threat that can be used by researchers and organizations to make contexts more equitable. Third, she investigates ways to create and maintain identity safe environments, where members of socially disadvantaged and advantaged groups can coexist, collaborate and thrive.
Dr. Kroeper encourages students who are interested in her research to email her and/or fill out a research assistant application.
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