January 2020 Newsletter

UC Davis and the School of Education Announce Collaboration with Chef and Food Advocate Alice Waters in Aggie Square

On Jan. 16, UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter, and School of Education Dean Lauren Lindstrom joined chef and food advocate Alice Waters and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg to announce an exciting new collaboration for Aggie Square: the Alice Waters Institute for Edible Education at UC Davis.

This new institute will bring together experts from across disciplines including education, health care, agriculture, policy and business to create new solutions for healthy, sustainable and equitable food systems. The School of Education will play a leading role, and Carlas McCauley, the School’s new Director of Research and Partnerships, will serve as the liaison.

“I am thrilled that Alice Waters will bring her expertise and commitment to Aggie Square,” May said. “Leaders at our School of Education and throughout UC Davis are eager to build on the Edible Schoolyard Project’s success to help students feel more connected to the food we eat. This will be a space for food education like no other.”

The collaboration participants have compiled an ambitious set of goals, including but not limited to:

• Benefit K-12 students via education, policy and community engagement, coupled with Waters’ aspiration to provide free, sustainable, healthy school lunches for all students
• Foster curricular development to support food-based learning and environmental stewardship across disciplines and at all levels of study
• Use gardens and kitchens as interactive classrooms for professional development of K-12 teachers and leaders, UC Davis faculty and students to teach lifelong food values and foster environmental stewardship
• Lead interactive, hands-on projects that support the sharing of best practices among K-12 educators, UC Davis faculty and students, and farmers, growers and ranchers who commit to sustainable practices for the land and their workers

“School of Education faculty, staff and students are excited to have the opportunity to be part of this collaboration,” said Lindstrom. “Our mission is about justice and educational equity for all youth. This is a perfect fit for the work that we already do at UC Davis and specifically in the School of Education.” To learn more about this new collaborative institute, visit the UC Davis News website or watch a livestream video of the announcement.

Maisha Winn Named Top Education Scholar in Nation 

Prof. Maisha T. Winn, Chancellor’s Leadership Professor and co-director of the School of Education’s Transformative Justice in Education Center, was recently named one of the top 200 education scholars in the U.S., according to the 2020 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings published by American Enterprise Institute director of education policy studies and Education Week blogger Frederick M. Hess. This notable rankings list considers more than 20,000 scholars across the nation. The top 200 are chosen using nine metrics meant to measure how much university-based academics contribute to educational practice and policy. 

Welsh Becomes Sixth UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow in School of Education History 

School of Education Associate Professor Megan Welsh has been named a 2019­–2020 UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow, a title she will hold for the next five years. She is the sixth School of Education faculty member to receive this prestigious honor. The Chancellor’s Fellows Program recognizes associate professors or recently promoted full professors who produce groundbreaking scholarly work and serve the university as dedicated teachers and campus citizens. As a Chancellor’s Fellow, Welsh will receive $25,000 to be used in support of her research, teaching and service activities. Read more on our website.

School of Education Welcomes Linda Sue Park

New York Times bestselling author and Newbery winner Linda Sue Park visited the School of Education last month as our 2019 Author in Residence. Park is the winner of the 2002 Newbery Medal for her book A Single Shard (2001), a story about an orphan boy in a 12th-century Korean potters’ village. The daughter of Korean immigrants, she is also the author of Project Mulberry (2005), When My Name Was Keoko (2002), A Long Walk to Water (2010), The Third Gift (2011) and many other picture books and novels.

As part of our annual Author in Residence program, Park spent two days presenting to our teaching credential candidates and resident teachers, signing books and participating in a family writing night in nearby Woodland, CA. Park will be the featured author this year at the School of Education’s Words Take Wing program on February 25, 2020. Learn more about Park and the Words Take Wing celebration on our website.

Recent Research Publications

• Alumni Emily Mae Harris (PhD ‘17), Colin Dixon (PhD ‘18) and Erin Bridges Bird (PhD ‘19), with Prof. Heidi Ballard, published “For Science and Self: Youth Interactions with Data in Community and Citizen Science” in Journal of the Learning Sciences.
• Prof. Kevin Gee, with colleagues from UC Davis Health, published the article “Excessive Absenteeism Due to Asthma in California Elementary Schoolchildren” in Academic Pediatrics.  
• Dean Lauren Lindstrom coauthored the article “Transition to Adulthood for Youth with Disabilities who Experienced Foster Care: An Ecological Approach” in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect.
• PhD candidate Kaozong N. Mouavangsou published the chapter “Hmong Does Not Mean Free: The Miseducation Of and By Hmong Americans” in the book Fight The Tower: Asian American Women Scholars’ Resistance and Renewal in the Academy. 
• Prof. Faheemah N. Mustafaa has a forthcoming article, “Black Males and Early Math Achievement: A Holistic Examination of Students’ Strengths and Role Strain with Policy Implications,” in the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering.
• Prof. Alexis Patterson Williams, Prof. Jennifer Higgs and Prof. Steven Athanases published “Noticing for Equity to Sustain Multilingual Literacies,” a column in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy.
• Prof. Nicole Sparapani coauthored the article “Predicting Second and Third Graders’ Reading Comprehension Gains: Observing Students’ and Classmates Talk During Literacy Instruction Using COLT” in the journal Scientific Studies of Reading.