Dr. Mendez has research and teaching interests related to the impact of poverty on the development of young children, parent involvement in children’s education, risk and resilience, and clinical interventions for ethnic minority children and families. In 2001, she received a five-year federal grant to develop and test a preventive intervention designed to promote home-school connection and parent-child interactive learning for children attending Head Start programs. Her current research, also funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, is a three-year project examining parent involvement and barriers to school readiness for children from English Language Learner families.
