Josipa Roksa is Assistant Professor of Sociology, with a courtesy appointment in the Curry School of Education, at the University of Virginia.  She received her B.A., summa cum laude, in Psychology from Mount Holyoke College, and Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University (NYU).

Professor Roksa’s primary research interests are in social stratification and education.  More specifically, her research aims to understand the transmission of advantage across generations, inequality in access, attainment, and learning in higher education, and interaction between school and work.  Her research has been published in Sociology of Education, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Teachers College Record, Review of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, and Social Science Research.

While she continues to explore a number of different topics pertaining to educational stratification, including the role of parenting practices in the transmission of class advantage, most of her current work is focused on two areas of inquiry: learning in higher education and life course transitions.  With respect to the latter, she is conducting a number of studies examining how young adults’ transitions into work, marriage and parenthood shape class and racial/ethnic inequalities in entry into higher education, degree completion, and subsequent labor market outcomes.  One of her projects in this area, entitled “Social Class at Work: How Family Background Shapes the Patterns and Consequences of College Employment,” is supported by the Spencer Foundation.

Professor Roksa is also a co-author, with Professor Richard Arum at NYU, of a forthcoming book entitled Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, Fall 2010).  Academically Adrift examines how individual experiences and institutional contexts are related to students’ development of critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills during the first two years of college. The research project that led to the book was organized by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) as part of its collaborative partnership with the Pathways to College Network and is supported by the Carnegie, Ford, Lumina, and Teagle Foundations.

Professor Roksa teaches courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels in statistics, research methods, education and social stratification.  She was named a University Teaching Fellow (UTF) for the 2008-2009 academic year.  Moreover, she has been selected a National Forum Fellow.  As a Fellow, she is participating in the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education, which aims to “prepare a core national group of emerging academic leaders to guide the future of the liberal arts” (click here for more info).

 

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