ABOUT
BIO
With Rankin since 2000, Stefani Bjorklund, Ph.D. (she/her) is a leader and mixed methods researcher who has enjoyed more than two decades helping higher education institutions assess—using a social justice lens—their campus climates in efforts to create more inclusive, diverse, equitable, and welcoming environments.Her scholarly research and publications have centered on a variety of topics in postsecondary education: access, recruitment, and retention of underrepresented college students and faculty; welfare reform and financial aid policies’ effects on college students; low-income student experiences; campus climate for students of color, women students, and low-income, parenting students; and effects of instructor activities, collaborative learning, and group work on gains in student skills.
Prior to joining Rankin, Dr. Bjorklund was a research associate at the Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education (CASEE), a unit of the National Academy of Engineering, where she spearheaded a multi-campus National Science Foundation-sponsored quantitative and qualitative investigation of faculty and student engagement in learning activities and lifelong learning. She also was a part of a team that evaluated two NSF-sponsored coalitions of engineering colleges preparing for assessment-based accreditation and program innovation, and taught research methods as an adjunct professor at Penn State Behrend. Prior to her work in higher education, she served as the manager of two Planned Parenthood Medical Centers, and was an administrator and social worker of a demonstration project funded by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect to support mothers whose children were at risk for abuse or neglect. Dr. Bjorklund earned a B.A. in psychology from Villanova University and a Ph.D. in higher education at The Pennsylvania State University.