ACUE Webinar

Meghan Snow, EdD
Chief Learning Officer

Dr. Meghan Snow serves as the Chief Learning Officer at ACUE, where she leads the design and delivery of learning experiences that are engaging, evidence-based, and seamlessly integrated with technology. Her work ensures that ACUE continues to drive meaningful impact for faculty, students, and institutional partners across the country.
Since joining ACUE in 2015, Meghan has played a pivotal role in shaping the organization’s content, product innovation, and research strategy. Under her leadership, ACUE has developed a robust research and evaluation function, with more than a dozen published studies demonstrating improved faculty confidence and student outcomes following ACUE certification. Meghan began her career in education as a classroom teacher through Teach For America and has held a variety of leadership and policy roles across the education sector.
She holds an Ed.D. in Leadership and Organizational Learning from Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and an M.Ed. in Educational Leadership from Sam Houston State University. Meghan graduated cum laude from Villanova University with a B.S. in Biology and Honors, and a B.A. in Philosophy with a concentration in Ethics..

Elizabeth Lawner, PhD
Senior Director, Research

Elizabeth K. Lawner, PhD is the Senior Director of Research 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[EL1] , 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. [EL2] 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.