May 2021 Newsletter
School of Education and UC Davis
2021 Commencement Schedules
This year, the School of Education will celebrate commencement with a virtual graduation celebration via Zoom on June 9. School of Education leaders and a student speaker will make short remarks followed by graduates being recognized by program. Break-out rooms will be available after the ceremony for socializing and celebrating by program. We look forward to celebrating with our graduates!
Separate from the School of Education graduation events, graduates will have two additional opportunities to celebrate. At a UC Davis in-person celebration on June 10, UC Davis Graduate Studies will host a limited in-person commencement for graduate students to walk individually across a main stage in front of a small audience of campus leaders. The UC Davis virtual commencement celebration online on June 11 will feature personalized and downloadable Class of 2021 graduation slides and celebratory videos.
City Nature Challenge Sacramento Nets Over 1,500 Species
The Center for Community and
Citizen Science and partners California Naturalist and Wild
Davis have wrapped up another great City Nature Challenge
Sacramento! This year from April 30–May 3, more than
600 Sacramento-area observers made 8,418 observations of 1,508
species, such as this Western Honey Bee. More than 400
cities worldwide take part in the City Nature Challenge event
each year, asking residents to photograph and identify
observations of local wildlife using the iNaturalist
app. See
this year’s wildlife photos and learn more.
FACULTY NEWS
Promotions for Gloria Rodriguez and
Alexis Patterson Williams
We’re very pleased to announce two School of Education faculty promotions! Congratulations to Prof. Gloria M. Rodriguez, who has been promoted to full Professor, and Prof. Alexis Patterson Williams, who has been promoted to Associate Professor.
Maisha Winn and Torry Winn Receive Spencer Foundation Grant
Dr. Maisha Winn and Dr. Lawrence
(Torry) Winn, co-founders of the Transformative
Justice in Education Center (TJE) will be co-principal
investigators on a $500,000 Spencer Foundation grant titled
“Transformative Justice at the Intersection of Schools and
Teacher Education.” With colleagues Dr. Thomas Philip of UC
Berkeley and Dr. Matthew Diemer of the University of
Michigan, they will leverage a partnership between UC
Berkeley’s teacher education program and TJE. Through the
project, pre-service and cooperating teachers will jointly
participate in a year-long professional development focused on
restorative justice and transformative justice so that teachers
can enact these principles and practices in their classrooms.
Kevin Gee Shares Strategies for
Making Classrooms Safe for Asian American Students
Amid the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes, Prof. Kevin Gee contributed to “Are America’s schools safe for Asian Americans,” an article published in The Conversation. Gee addresses what schools can do to reduce threats to Asian American students, suggesting encouraging supportive relationships between students, engaging students in discussions about bullying, and acknowledging and reporting instances of harassment, among other strategies. Read the full story.
ALUMNI NEWS
Teacher Education Alumnus Jeff Mitchum Competes on Jeopardy!
Vacaville High School English
teacher Jeffrey Mitchum, Cred. ’15, MA ’16 competed
on the game show Jeopardy! on May 11 and 12. After a
strong first night where he won $31,200 and earned the title of
returning champion, on his second day he lost to a challenger
despite correctly answering the final clue. It was an exciting
run nevertheless for all of us in the community who cheered him
on. Congratulations to Mr. Mitchum on his Jeopardy! appearance
and his win!
WEBINARS
Catch Up with the Spring Ph.D. Colloquium Series
This quarter, the Graduate Group in
Education hosted recent and upcoming Ph.D. recipients to discuss
their research. Watch recordings of all the presentations on
our YouTube
playlist, including “We’re Not Here for
a Photo Op”: Engineering Latinx Student Success,” presented
by Vanessa Segundo.
The final discussion of the spring series is coming up on Thursday, June 3. Tune in to see Yanira Madrigal Garcia present “Revealing colonial schooling: Youth and teachers resisting racialization in two urban high schools.” Register here.
Marcela Cuellar Featured in HSI Initiative Webinar
On May 5, 2021, the UC
Hispanic-Serving Institutions Initiative hosted a webinar
presentation of key findings from the Initiative’s first report,
“La Lucha Sigue: The Role of the University of California as a
Hispanic-Serving Research Institution.” Prof. Marcela
Cuellar was a featured panelist and discussed UC’s
unique role as a research-intensive, public HSI system in the
broader HSI conversation. Read the
report or watch the webinar.
Danny C. Martinez Participates in Anti-Racism Symposium
Prof. Danny C. Martinez was a
panelist in the Graduate Anti-Racism Symposium hosted by UC Davis
Graduate Studies and the Office of Diversity, Equity and
Inclusion. The panelists discussed steps that can be taken to
address and work against institutional racism at the university,
including funding and supporting faculty of color and scholarship
surrounding race issues and creating space for marginalized
languages and cultures. Watch
here.
See Kevin Gee in Conversation on Educational Disparities
Prof. Kevin Gee recently
participated in “A Conversation on Educational Disparities,”
hosted by the University of Connecticut’s Human Rights
Symposium. In the webinar, Gee and the other panelists discuss
racial inequities in education, including uneven school funding,
disciplinary actions against students, and representation in the
classroom, and what can be done to address these
issues. Watch here.
Recent Research Publications
- Prof. Yuuko Uchikoshi Tonkovich co-authored “Home Language Environment and Executive Functions in Mexican American and Chinese American Preschoolers in Head Start,” published in Early Education and Development and “Decoding the Role of Cerebellum in the Early Stages of Reading Acquisition,” published in Cortex.