The City College of New York's 2025 Social Mobility Lab grant recipients
The Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership’s Social Mobility Lab at The City College of New York has announced the 2025 recipients of its Social Mobility Lab research grants. These grants support interdisciplinary scholarship aimed at advancing understanding of, and strategies for promoting, social mobility in the United States.
Launched last year, the Social Mobility Lab’s mission is to discover new ways to accelerate and expand opportunity for students and the communities they represent. Its approach is to learn more about what is driving social mobility, translate that knowledge into programs and practices to help students move up in life, and to engage the people and communities who can most benefit from this work.
This year’s cohort includes six innovative research projects led by 11 scholars from institutions across the country.
The projects explore questions that reflect the lived experience of those the Lab seeks to help in their journey to a better life, such as: how gentrification affects access to public education; what shapes intergenerational mobility; exploring racial differences in where families start, where they end up, and why; whether children of overeducated parents have different attitudes on postsecondary education than students of parents with strong education-to-job match; which career services and related supports are most effective and how do they influence student outcomes during and after college.
Others will explore questions that look beyond traditional metrics related to social mobility, asking: how do experiences outside the classroom, such as extracurricular clubs, part-time jobs, and family responsibilities, shape future plans; and how do educational experiences support and shape students’ aspirations for meaningful work, connecting their wider life purposes with one’s gift and society’s needs.
Each project was selected for its potential to generate actionable insights and inform policies that foster a deeper understanding of social mobility and make it more accessible.
The 2025 Social Mobility Lab Research grant recipients are:
- Mohamed Hassan Awad, Assistant Professor, California State University, Los Angeles;
- Andre Avramchuk, Professor, California State University, Los Angeles;
- Mabel Sanchez, Assistant Professor, California State University, Los Angeles;
- Seongwon Choi, Assistant Professor, California State University, Los Angeles;
- Teresa Booker, Associate Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY;
- Janeria Easley, Assistant Professor, Emory University;
- Regina S. Baker, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;
- Emily Dore, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health;
- Andrew S. Hanks, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University;
- Julie Gressley, Ph.D. candidate, The Ohio State University;
- Joyce Kim, Ph.D. candidate, University of Pennsylvania; and
- Elizabeth Rivera, Associate Professor, Montclair State University.
These scholars join the Social Mobility Lab’s growing network of researchers committed to deepening understanding of economic and social mobility, advancing policy-relevant research, and making complex ideas more accessible to broader audiences.
The new cohort was announced at the Social Mobility’s inaugural end-of-year summit on April 28. Over the course of the summit, the Lab showcased research from the inaugural cohort of grantees addressing the many dimensions of social mobility; prominently featured the voices of students sharing their own stories of social mobility; and highlighted the unique roles that CCNY and CUNY play as engines of upward mobility.
“When we started the Lab, we said the only reason to study social mobility was to create more of it. Based on the initial findings shared by our first cohort of grantees within CUNY at our Summit, we are optimistic that they will do just that,” said Bob McKinnon, director of the Social Mobility Lab. “We are equally hopeful that our new cohort of grantees, from colleges and Universities across the country, will similarly produce important knowledge to help others move up in life. We are so grateful for the opportunity to support their critical work.”
In addition to their research projects, grant recipients will be invited to participate in discussions and activities aimed at enhancing the translational impact of their research. In Spring 2026, the grantees will share their findings with students, faculty, administrators, and staff in the second annual Social Mobility Lab Summit, which will consider their potential applications to improving student mobility.
About the Social Mobility Lab
The Social Mobility Lab at the Colin Powell School at the City College of New York aims to discover new ways to accelerate and expand opportunity for our students, their families and the communities they represent. The Lab supports research, teaching, public discussions, and experimentation — all geared to promote a better understanding of social mobility and the role higher education plays in advancing it. The Lab is unique among organizations focused on social mobility, because it is community-based and geared toward implementation of solutions: as we learn, we will translate that knowledge into programs and practices to help our students move up in life and will engage the people and communities who can most benefit from what we are doing at every stage of our work.
About the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership
Established in 2013, the Colin Powell School is home to the social science departments at CCNY as well as the core leadership development and public service programs of the College. With almost 4,000 students, and graduating the most CCNY students annually, the Colin Powell School mission is to transform the nation’s most diverse student body into tomorrow’s global leaders. Half of our students are immigrants; more than seventy percent are first-generation college students. Eighty percent are people of color. Most come from lower income backgrounds. The Colin Powell School and City College remain among the most effective engines of economic and social mobility in the United States. The School is led by a faculty dedicated to the highest standards of research and to the university’s democratic and public obligations. Read more about the Colin Powell School.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.2 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Syd Steinhardt
212-650-7875
ssteinhardt@ccny.cuny.edu