Dr. Nayantara Kurpad (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at St. Mary's College in St. Mary's City, Maryland. Dr. Kurpad earned her Ph.D. from University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2022.

With roots in cognitive theories and its applications to practical situations, she focuses on investigating the why’s and how’s of student learning, with a special interest in metacognition. She strongly believes the principles of cognitive psychology can directly influence the science of learning and result in informed practice.

Specifically, she is interested in answering questions related to factors that impact student learning such as test-impaired new learning in the classroom, question order on students’ metacognitive judgments, the role of variability in students’ performance, study strategies of younger and older adults, and a comparison between older and younger adults’ metacognitive judgments. She teaches Introduction to Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Research Methods, Analysis, & Writing, and Psychology in the Movies.

Additional languages spoken: Kannada and Hindi (fluent)

Recommended research publication: Geraci, L., Kurpad, N., Tirso, R., Gray, K. N., & Wang, Y. (2023). Metacognitive errors in the classroom: The role of variability of past performance on exam prediction accuracy. Metacognition & Learning, 18, 219–236.