Lubi Lenaburg

Programs

• Apprentice Researchers (AR)

Bio

Lubi Lenaburg earned her BS and MA degrees in Statistics at UCSB. While earning her MA, she worked as a teaching assistant and became very interested in education. She realized she had a passion for teaching as well as for educational research. She decided to pursue a PhD in education, with an emphasis in research methodology, at the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at UCSB. Her dissertation work focused on developing evaluation tools and innovative applications of existing statistical methods within education.

She is currently the evaluator for several NSF projects at UCSB's California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) and Materials Research Lab (MRL), including a STEP program (Expanding Pathways to Science, Engineering, and Mathematics - EPSEM), a GK-12 program (Let's Explore Applied Physical Science - LEAPS), an IMI program (International Center for Materials Research - ICMR), and an IGERT program (Conversion of Energy Through Molecular Platforms - ConvEne). Her experience has helped her learn to avoid common mistakes made in evaluation, and she has a good understanding of how NSF programs run and how to approach their evaluation. She also recognizes each program has its own set of goals, and that an evaluator must design a plan to best fit the individual needs of a program.

In 2008, she began coordinating the Apprentice Researchers summer program, where she gets to work with local high school students and UCSB graduate and post doctoral students. She feels fortunate to have a job that allows her to interact with students and also pursue educational research. She believes that the experience of coordinating a program helps her keep a realistic perspective in how she approaches evaluation.