Anna Woodcock

Anna Woodcock is a senior research fellow in Claremont Graduate University’s Division of Behavioral & Organizational Sciences, and is affiliated with the Applied Social Psychology Program along with the Claremont Evaluation Center. Her research interests lie in the broad areas of diversity, prejudice, and stereotyping—specifically, understanding the contextual factors that create and reinforce social disparities such as the underrepresentation of women and minorities in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Woodcock studied at Macquarie University in Australia and received her PhD in social psychology from Purdue University. She now conducts longitudinal research and evaluation of large-scale interventions for broadening participation in STEM, and in issues of diversity and inclusion more generally. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education, and she maintains active collaborations with the Endocrine Society and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). Through this work, she answers empirical questions about the short and longer-term impact of negative stereotypes on identity and identity balance. One example explores an intervention with the parents of Latinx incoming college STEM majors to significantly increase students’ academic performance and decrease their likelihood of leaving their STEM major. Research then compares the impact of how White and Latinx STEM students balance their racial/ethnic and science identities over time.

Woodcock attributes a share of the success of these large-scale longitudinal research programs to the tailored panel management (TPM) protocol she developed and has used for the past decade to maximize participant commitment and participation in research. She has mentored and trained more than 100 students on her research projects, and collaborates with investigators and their students across many institutions.  She infuses her research into her teaching, with courses in social psychology, the psychology of prejudice, and statistics. Woodcock is also a research scientist and affiliated principal investigator at California State University San Marcos, where she teaches and works with students.