Allison Black-Maier

Allison is an evaluator and researcher who has been working with Catalyst since 2020. She was trained as a cognitive psychologist and received her Ph.D. from Duke in 2017. Allison’s doctoral research focused on learning and memory, studying the processes that promote long-term retention as well as those that make us prone to memory errors. Since graduating, she has applied her research skills as an evaluator of both formal and informal education programs. Allison particularly enjoys helping partners use relational databases that allow them to track the outcomes they care most about. For example, Allison helped develop and manage the Salesforce database that the SEAS Islands Alliance uses to document student pathways in STEM. As 2021 ARIS Fellows, Allison and Karen showcased the work of Broader Impacts professionals to illustrate the range of possibilities for using databases to track research impacts.