Kara Makara is a doctoral candidate in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan. Through the STIET fellowship she hopes to better understand how applications in network design and information systems can improve the goals of public education. Her research interests include general motivation theory, the role of the school context in shaping student motivation, and the effect of policy-based incentive systems such as high stakes testing on student motivation, self-regulation, and learning. She has a B.S. in Psychology from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.