Margaret Beam is a developmental psychologist with several years of research and evaluation experience. Her primary areas of expertise include child and adolescent development, education reform, research and evaluation design, survey design and statistical analysis, and qualitative and quantitative research methods. She is proficient on the use of advanced statistical techniques and beginning reading instruction research and assessment.

Dr. Beam joined RMC Research Corporation as a Research Associate to conduct research in the areas of school reform and community-based interventions. Some of her recent evaluation projects have focused on elementary school reading initiatives, early childhood services, Title I schoolwide programs, comprehensive school reform, and the mentoring of high-risk middle and high school students. She has been involved in evaluation design, instrument development, and data collection; worked extensively with large longitudinal data sets including school assessment data; conducted qualitative and quantitative data analysis; and prepared reports and visual displays for presentation to policymakers and professional audiences. Dr. Beam worked on all aspects of the evaluation of Project Youth Connect, a school-based mentoring project. She led the data collection effort, conducted student survey data analyses, and made substantial contributions to the final evaluation report. For the evaluation of California's Reading Excellence Act program, Dr. Beam was responsible for managing the survey data collection and data entry; conducting school site visits that involved classroom observations and interviews with school administrators, teachers, and district staff; collecting school demographic and assessment data from the California Department of Education; analyzing quantitative and qualitative data; presenting study findings; and writing reports. Dr. Beam has had similar roles in other education and community-based evaluation projects at RMC Research.

Prior to joining RMC Research, Dr. Beam was a program evaluator for the Social Science Research Center at California State University at Fullerton. Her primary responsibility was managing the evaluation of a school and youth correctional facility-based program. She also volunteered with the Laurel House Program, a group home facility for youth in Orange County (California), to develop a process and impact evaluation, and she developed an evaluation for one of the YMCA's mentor programs that was implemented in homeless shelters throughout Orange County.

Dr. Beam obtained a M.A. degree in Social Ecology and a Ph.D. in Human Development from the University of California at Irvine and has presented papers and published articles on a range of topics.