S-BYE Lab | Center for Educational Equity | Teachers College, Columbia University

School Board and Youth Engagement (SBYE) Lab

The S-BYE Lab is the Center for Educational Equity's hub for cutting-edge research on American school boards, youth engagement, and democratic innovation.

Vision

The School Board and Youth Engagement (S-BYE) Lab at Teachers College develops research-based ideas and new technology tools for strengthening youth engagement and redesigning school boards to be more democratic.

Mission

Our mission is to provide rigorous, multi-methodological, community-based research and new technologies that contribute towards the larger goal of developing a functioning multiracial democracy around communities, particular school systems, in the United States and around the world.

Our Work

The S-BYE Lab takes mixed-methods approaches to develop research designs that align with our vision and mission. We specialize in experimental designs (survey experiments as well as field experiments) as well as survey data collection, focus groups, interviews, text analysis, and observational methods. We produce a range of outputs from peer-reviewed academic papers to policy-related reports to toolkits for practitioners.

Our Lab Team

The S-BYE Lab employs both undergraduate and graduate students from Teachers College and the Columbia University campuses as research assistants (RAs). RAs typically work anywhere from 5 to 20 hours per week on a variety of research related tasks such as data entry and collection, data analysis and report writing on collaborative projects. In addition to their individual tasks, RAs also attend bi-weekly lab meetings with Dr. Collins and other Lab personnel. The S-BYE Lab is currently fully staffed for Fall 2025 and is not accepting applications for the current semester.

Are You a Student Interested in Working with the S-BYE Lab?

Students interested in becoming S-BYE RAs in the future should email Dr. Kiki Leis, the S-BYE Lab Associate Director & Research Coordinator, at kjl2193@tc.columbia.edu, a copy of their resumes and an explanation of why they would like to be part of the lab. To qualify as a RA, interested students are required to spend one semester attending lab meetings before they will be considered for the position.