Leading Workforce Effectiveness:
Teacher Retention Study

Lead Researcher
Dr. Laura Lunsford 
Brief Overview 

The pandemic affected all of us, and it certainly affected our schools in North Carolina. I'm Dr. Laura Lunsford, a professor of psychology at Campbell University, and I'm pleased to be leading the research team to investigate the longitudinal impact of COVID on student learning in North Carolina. We are especially focused on how the pandemic influenced the education workforce in rural counties. The study is informed by critical workforce needs identified by the state of North Carolina.  For example, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction wrote a report that stated they could benefit from examining the hiring, recruitment, and onboarding processes for districts that were successful in teacher attrition to find scalable best practices that can help reduce attrition and other districts,

We're interviewing school leaders, including the superintendent and principals. We are also talking with teachers, focus groups, and primary, elementary, and high schools to learn the. Factors that influence their decisions to stay and support their teacher effectiveness and challenges that got in the way.

We look forward to providing our results within the next year. We are especially grateful to the North Carolina Collaborative Program for funding this work through the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. I am pleased to lead the research team with other senior investigators from Campbell University. We are one of two private schools in the state that was awarded this funding; Dr. Kathleen Castillo-Clark and Dr. Terrie Hampton-Jones join me along with Dr. Justin Nelson to lead the project activities. A team of Campbell University undergraduate researchers are also joining us: Rebecca Roope, Anya Campbell, Randi Agnew, Anna Barnak, Sarah Elizabeth Hall, Jeannie Biggs, and Allison Cortes Rojas.

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