Rate My Professor D. Betsy McCoach

D. Betsy McCoach, Ph.D., is a professor in the Research Methods, Measurement, and Evaluation program in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut's Neag School of Education. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Connecticut in 2003, a Sixth Year Certificate in School Psychology from the same institution in 2002, and an M.A. in Education with a concentration in School Psychology in 2001. Her earlier degrees include an M.A. in Secondary Education from Lehigh University in 1993 and a B.A., cum laude, in Economics and French from the University of Delaware in 1991. McCoach began her academic career at UConn as an Assistant Professor in 2003, advancing to Associate Professor in 2008 and full Professor in 2014. Since 2010, she has served as Director of the Data Analysis and Training Institute at Connecticut.

Her research focuses on gifted education, particularly underachievement among gifted students, multilevel modeling, latent variable modeling, applied measurement, and affective instrument design. McCoach has co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and books, including Instrument Design in the Affective Domain (3rd ed., 2013, with R.K. Gable and J. Madura), Multilevel Modeling of Educational Data (2008, co-edited with A.A. O’Connell), Motivating Gifted Students (2004, with D. Siegle), and Introduction to Modern Modelling Methods (2022). Key publications include "Factors that differentiate underachieving gifted students from high-achieving gifted students" (Gifted Child Quarterly, 2003, with D. Siegle) and "Assessing the growth of gifted students" (Gifted Child Quarterly, 2013, with K. Rambo and M. Welsh). She has received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Association for Gifted Children (2022), Dr. Perry A. Zirkel Distinguished Teaching Award (2018), Neag School Distinguished Researcher Award (2016), and was elected a Fellow of the American Psychological Association Division 5 (2014). McCoach edited Gifted Child Quarterly (2012-2017) and Journal of Advanced Academics (2006-2011), and has served on numerous federal grant review panels and as methodological lead on projects such as Project EAGLE.