University of Southern Mississippi: Higher first-year student retention

Sarah V Diehl, L.P.D.
Senior Project Manager

Sarah V Diehl, L.P.D. is the Research team’s Senior Project Manager at ACUE. Dr. Diehl graduated magna cum laude from the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies, where she earned her dual Bachelors in International Business and German Studies. She also holds a Masters in Public Policy and Administration from John Jay College and a Doctorate of Law and Policy with a focus on Education Policy from Northeastern University. Dr. Diehl’s research focuses on the development, management, and evaluation of programs within institutional systems that promote individual educational and economic opportunity. She is passionate about programs that bridges gaps for those who face systematic barriers to success, and past work has focused on impacts for low-income and first-gen students, military-affiliated students, and foreign exchange students. Her earlier experience spans applied research at John Jay College, where she contributed to departmental working papers and course development, and operational leadership at community-based nonprofits, where she managed grant compliance and multi-site program operations. Before that, she spent four years overseeing student and exchange visitor programs and strengthening cross-sector visa sponsor partnerships. Her work with military families has been highlighted in NMSN Career Connections Magazine, The Better Biz Academy, and with Wives of the Armed Forces. Her commitment to high-impact programming led her to ACUE in 2020, where her strategic research contributions have been featured at conferences for the American Educational Research Association.

Elizabeth Lawner, PhD
Senior Director, Research

Elizabeth K. Lawner, PhD is Research Advisor at ACUE. Dr. Lawner graduated cum laude from Duke University, where she earned her BA in psychology. She holds an MA and PhD in social psychology and a certificate in quantitative research methods, all from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Lawner’s primary research interest has been the recruitment and retention of women in science, technology, engineering, and math, particularly focused on higher education. Her work in this area on student reactions to performance feedback and role models led her to consider how instructors could play a part in increasing equity in education , an interest that brought her to ACUE in 2018. Dr. Lawner’s research has been published in Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Social Psychology of Education, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, Social Science & Medicine, and Afterschool Matters, and she has presented at conferences for the American Educational Research Association, Association for the Study of Higher Education, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Association for Psychological Science, and Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.  She has also co-authored several books, including a research-based book for parents, Breaking Through! Helping Girls Succeed in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, which received the 2017 Book of the Year Award, parent/caregiver category, from the National Association for Gifted Children.

Paloma Benavides, PhD
Senior Research Associate

Paloma Benavides, PhD, is a Senior Research Associate at ACUE, where she leads quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research to evaluate the impact of ACUE’s faculty development programs, as well as research on other topics affecting faculty and students. She graduated summa cum laude from Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile, where she earned a BA in Psychology and an MA in Counseling Psychology. She earned her PhD in Social Psychology with a focus on cross-cultural psychology from Korea University, where she studied as a recipient of the Korean Government Scholarship Program (KGSP).

Paloma’s primary research interest has focused on cultural psychology and higher education, with work spanning topics such as cross-cultural differences in identity, motivation, well-being. Her research has been published in Psychological Reports and the Korean Journal of Psychology, and she has co-authored additional work in Korean-language outlets. She has presented at national and international conferences including the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), the International Congress of Psychology (ICP), and the Korea Social and Personality Psychological Association. Most recently, she presented at AERA 2024 on the Meaning Extraction Method and co-authored a 2025 presentation on student perceptions of faculty using this method.