She is also one of the founders and the current acting president of the Association of Working-Class Academics, an organization composed of college faculty and staff who were the first in their families to graduate from college. She has written two books on the experiences and identity reformations of working-class college students, The Burden of Academic Success: Loyalists, Renegades, and Double Agents (2010) and College and the Working Class (2012). Her current research focuses on the outcomes of college graduates, specifically the role of class and the impact of student debt.