Kendall Wulbrun

she/her

Research Fellow

University of Colorado Boulder

Having lived and attended and/or worked at schools in almost every region of the country, Kendall has seen firsthand the inequities that exist in accessing both K-12 and higher education in the U.S. Her experiences in these various places have fueled her passion for and commitment to studying and rectifying educational opportunity gaps at all levels.

From 2019-2021, Kendall worked as a college admission counselor at a private, four-year university in California. Having researched the impact of stereotype threat on students of color at a predominantly white institution as an undergraduate student, Kendall entered her role as an admission counselor with a particular focus on understanding and addressing the barriers that limit access to higher education for historically marginalized students. Recruiting and evaluating applicants for two years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, raised many questions in her mind about the use of long-standing inequitable practices and the unwillingness of higher educational institutions to change. As a graduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder, Kendall conducted a qualitative research study with admission counselors at 10 private, selective institutions across the country about how they evaluate applications in practice and the ways in which these processes contribute to social reproduction more broadly.

Kendall holds a master’s degree in Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice from the University of Colorado Boulder and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Communication Studies from Texas Christian University. Her research interests focus on understanding the ways opportunity gaps throughout one’s educational journey contribute to inequitable access to higher education, particularly for students these systems were not built to serve. She plans to apply to PhD programs in Education Policy this fall.