Dr. Debalina Maitra is a Post-doctoral Research Associate at ASU. Prior to her current role, Dr. Maitra was employed by CAFECS (Chicago Alliance for Equity in Computer Science), an NSF-funded Research Practice Partnership, for almost two years. She completed her Ph.D. in Literacy Education with a minor in Qualitative Research Methods. Her research interests are equitable pedagogy, racial equity, culturally relevant pedagogy, and identity. Her latest work at ASU is focused on exploring the experiences of the Black engineering graduate students in their professional spaces and counter spaces and reflect on them critically. She is also exploring the role strain of Black graduate and undergraduate students especially women while they navigate higher academia. She is interested in the professional development of faculty members based on those experiences and wants to promote anti-racist training/curriculum that will address the implicit racial and cultural biases of the faculty members.
She is also exploring the transition of marginalized students from community college to higher academia and professional fields. Dr. Maitra is involved in writing several NSF grants and is open to collaboration with researchers with similar research agendas.
Dr. Maitra taught EGR 671: Application of Qualitative Methods for Engineering Education Research (Spring, 2021) at ASU. She has taught ESL classes and Qualitative Research classes during her doctoral training. She is passionate to teach graduate and undergraduate students. She believes in building community and empower marginalized students through effective mentorship.
In her spare time, she likes to listen to music, go on hikes, check out breweries, hang out with close friends and read.