Our Mission
We apply psychological and behavioral science to support the success of all students, with a focus on social and economic justice.
Summitlab Corporation (Summitlab) was founded in 2019 by Dr. Nicholas Sorensen (Executive Director) with the goal of helping educators and developers build and scale social-behavioral interventions that achieve maximum impacts for students. Too many promising innovations in education fail to achieve their potential for three reasons.
Developers sometimes have a hunch about what components of an innovation matter for moving the needle on student outcomes but never validate the active ingredients of a program or initiative.
Developers sometimes make decisions about how to implement an intervention that limit usability, feasibility, scalability and sustainability.
Developers sometimes fail to evoke the active ingredients of a program or initiative because they don’t communicate and frame core messages clearly and consistently.
The disappointing result is that promising innovations fail to achieve impacts for students. Or, once they do, they fail to be scalable or sustainable in resource-limited contexts, limiting their usage and impact for those educators and students who otherwise might benefit most.
Our Approach
At Summitlab, we partner with educators and developers seeking to advance innovations with the strongest foundation of theoretical and empirical support, and with a focus on equity. That is, we aim to produce better outcomes for those students, families, schools and communities who have been systemically disadvantaged.
We are committed to applying the best science and strongest methods to objectively test and maximize results for our partners and the students, families and communities they serve.
By focusing on innovations with the strongest foundation of theoretical and empirical support, we aren’t just interested in the question “does it work?” but rather questions such as “how do we make it work better?” “how do we make it work at scale?” and “how do we achieve maximal results with minimal resources?”
More signal, less noise.
At Summitlab, our motto is “more signal, less noise.” That is, we address the challenges highlighted above by testing and understanding the active ingredients (the signal) of any program or initiative—those components that produce and drive impacts. This requires careful attention to process and implementation.
We work with our partners to assess and review all operational decisions about how to implement an intervention, with a focus on usability, feasibility, scalability and sustainability of implementation within complex systems. In doing so, we help our partners use objective data to bolster the signal and reduce the noise in every implementation decision.
Bolstering the signal requires a deep understanding of fidelity of implementation, including dosage, adherence to a clearly defined implementation model, quality of implementation, student response and engagement, and students’ experience of core messages. We work with our partners to operationalize and measure each of these components of implementation.
Finally, we appreciate that all educational interventions are fundamentally psychological interventions. This is critical because the efficacy of any educational intervention depends on the clarity with which educators create, and students experience, core messages and concepts. Clear and consistent communication is essential at every step—developing resources, training and coaching educators, and helping educators consistently evoke a specific “meaning-making” experience for students. Whenever possible, we apply psychological and behavioral science toward this end.