Adela Soliz is an assistant professor of higher education and public policy in the Department of Leadership, Policy, & Organizations at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College. Soliz’s research focuses on policies affecting student success at public community colleges. Her research uses large state administrative or national datasets and econometric methods to estimate causal effects of policies and program participation on community college students’ outcomes. Soliz is interested in issues related to college affordability, the development of vocational education at community colleges, and transfer and articulation between two and four-year institutions. Her research has been published in journals including Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Education Finance and Policy. Soliz’s research has been funded by the Lumina Foundation, the American Educational Research Association, and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. She is a WT Grant Foundation Scholar, class of 2024.
Before going to Vanderbilt, Soliz was a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy. Soliz holds a PhD in Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Before getting her doctorate, Soliz taught developmental English for several years at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, as well as ESL, GED, and citizenship classes in non-profits supporting immigrant populations around New York City. She earned her BA in Anthropology from Reed College.