Her primary research focus is educational inequality, particularly issues involving race, gender, and family structure. She served as a CUR social science councilor from 2006–2009 and has written two articles for the CUR Quarterly on conducting interdisciplinary undergraduate research abroad. Orr has served as the senior thesis coordinator for the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Linfield for the past seven years, and actively supports undergraduate research at the annual meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association.