Rachel has more than twenty years of experience in the fields of social science research, measurement and assessment, and educational evaluation, working for diverse organizations such as the University of Alabama College of Community Health Sciences, the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, and Houghton-Mifflin’s Riverside Publishing. Formerly the Assistant Director of the Center for Educational Accountability at UAB, she has served as Co-PI for several large-scale, multi-year educational research and reform efforts funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institutes of Health, and the Institute for Education Sciences. She holds undergraduate degrees in Psychology and English from Birmingham-Southern College, a Master’s Degree in Gifted Education from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology.