Lisa Lopez

Dr. Lisa López earned her Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from the University of Miami and completed an NSF-funded post-doctoral fellowship in Language and Literacy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Dr. López's research agenda involves furthering our understanding of, and improving upon, the educational and environmental opportunities of Latino Dual Language Learner children in the U.S. She currently has three active interrelated research strands: 1) Identifying the developmental trajectory of school readiness skills for young Latino DLL children; 2) Applying an ecological perspective (i.e. home and classroom factors) to better understand the developmental trajectory of school readiness skills in these children; and 3) Identifying and developing curricula and assessments that better serve the needs of these children.

Dr. Lopez has a strong ongoing partnership with the local Head Start grantee and conducts applied research in Head Start classrooms through the Tampa Bay area. Dr. Lopez works closely with doctoral students, mentoring students as part of her Bilingual School Readiness lab on topics related to the social-emotional and academic development of Latino children, training teachers on working with DLLs, and increasing language and literacy skills among at-risk populations. Dr. Lopez is actively involved in student dissertation committees and is currently accepting Ph.D. students.