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.