Publications

2026

Who gon’ save us: Highlighting the experiences of Black women in higher education through collaborative autoethnography
In Tapscott, D. & Ghebreab, N. (Eds). Black doctoral students’ experiences in academia. Routledge.

2025

Discrepancies in college belonging: How demographics may shape the fulfillment of belonging expectations
T. Rayford, A. Jeng, N. Ruedas-Gracia, D. Song
Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2025

2024

Taking it Day by Day: Reasons for Daily Changes in University Belonging.
N. Ruedas-Gracia, S. Sun., T. Rayford, G. Jiang, L. Wu, A.H. Maghsoodi
Emerging Adulthood [pdf]

2023

Belonging Fulfillment: Are Universities Meeting the Expectations of Their Students?
Proceedings of the 2023 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting [pdf]

2022

Educational Enrichment: The Benefits of Near-Peer Mentoring for Undergraduate Engineering Students.
T. Rayford, N. Ruedas-Gracia, M. Goldstein, C. Schimpf, L. Herbert, L. Escamilla*, J. Zavala*
Proceedings of the 129th American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition [pdf]

Presentations

2025

Using belonging fulfillment to understand the psychosocial development of Black graduate students [Poster Presentation]
T. Rayford & A. Marchand
Society for Research in Child Development Conference, Minneapolis, MN.
Sense of belonging in higher education
L. Sales* & T. Rayford
Undergraduate Research Symposium. Champaign, IL.
Sense of belonging in higher education
N. Abraham* & T. Rayford
Undergraduate Research Symposium. Champaign, IL.

2024

The Role of Socioeconomic and Cultural Influences on Family, Education, and Safety in Black Parental Relocation Decisions to Midwestern Towns
A. Fair*, T. Rayford, A. Marchand
Illinois Summer Research Symposium, University of Illinois
Expect the Unexpected: Belonging Fulfillment of Transfer Students
T. Rayford, A. Jeng, S. Sun, A. Marchand, N. Ruedas-Gracia
Black Graduate Conference in Psychology, University of Michigan

2023

Investigating the Factor Structure of Sense of Social and Academic Fit Scale: A Multilevel Bifactor Study
L. Wu, G. Jiang, N. Ruedas-Gracia, T. Rayford & S. Sun
Modern Modeling Methods Conference, University of Connecticut
What Did You Expect? The Importance of Expectations and a Sense of Belonging [Lightning Talk]
T. Rayford
University of Illinois Graduate College Research Live, Champaign, IL

2022

A Pheonmenological Approach to Understanding Black Graduate Students' Sense of Belonging to Their Program
T. Rayford
International Conference of Qualitative Inquiry, Champaign, IL
Understanding Sense of Belonging Among Black Students IN Flipping the Script: Using Racialized Experiences at Predominately White Institutions to Interrogate Classic Models of Psychological Theories [Symposium]
T. Rayford
Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention, Chicago, IL

* Denotes undergraduate contributor