October 2022 Newsletter

FEATURED NEWS

Michal Kurlaender and Paco Martorell Receive IES Grant to Examine COVID-19 Community College Recovery

Profs. Michal Kurlaender and Paco Martorell will lead a team of researchers recently awarded $3 million to assess pandemic recovery inside community colleges.

The U.S. Department of Education-awarded grant will support three years of work to better understand effective strategies for student success during periods of intense disruption, like the pandemic. 

The project will leverage the research expertise of the California Education Lab and administrative data available to the lab through a data sharing partnership with the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

In addition to the $3 million research grant, the Wheelhouse center was also awarded $600,000 to support convenings of a new national network of research teams investigating community college responses to COVID-19. Read the story. 

College Futures Foundation Grant for California Education Lab

The California Education Lab was awarded a $488,000 grant from the College Futures Foundation to support ongoing research about the college pipeline in California, including a focus on financial aid for community college students. 

Sandi Redenbach and Ken Gelatt Learning Lab Dedicated

Thanks to a generous gift from longtime supporters Sandi Redenbach (’72, Cred. ’73) and Ken Gelatt (’67, Cred. ’68), the School of Education has renovated and upgraded Academic Surge Room 2377. “This classroom has been transformed into a world-class teaching and learning environment,” said Dean Lauren Lindstrom. “I’m very pleased that it will now be known as the Sandi Redenbach and Ken Gelatt Learning Lab in honor of Sandi and Ken, who have done so much for our students and the whole School of Education.” 

Welcome New Board of Advisors Members

The Dean’s Board of Advisors is pleased to announce the appointment of three new members:

Marcy Daniel is chief product officer at PowerSchool, where she is a strategic leader in the company’s efforts to deliver innovations to K-12 schools globally. In her role, she is responsible for developing the unified strategic vision of PowerSchool’s platform and portfolio of products.

Geoff Hash is an employment attorney who launched his own practice in 2016 and founded EiroBridge in 2021. He specializes in workplace resolution, and joins the Board as a staunch advocate for transformative mediation. Born into a family of educators, Geoff is passionate about supporting teachers.

Sharon Takahashi (BA ’74, Cred. ’75) is a retired educator with over 30 years of classroom experience, and received the Golden Apple Award for teaching in the Chicago region. A first generation college graduate, Sharon is passionate about empowering students in and out of the classroom. 

RESEARCH NEWS

Wheelhouse Releases New Series of Community College Research Briefs

Wheelhouse: The Center for Community College Leadership and Research conducts rigorous, third-party research to inform practice and policy development for California’s community college leaders and state and local policymakers. View their latest research briefs, which dive into community college baccalaureate programs, enrollment and persistence patterns during the pandemic, and finance.

ALUMNI AND STUDENT NEWS

Fabrizio Mejia Chairs UC Berkeley Committee

EdD student Fabrizio Mejia, UC Berkeley’s assistant vice chancellor for student success, equity and inclusion, is co-chairing Berkeley’s Latinx-Thriving Institution Initiative Steering Committee.

The committee seeks to change the narrative and implementation of a Hispanic-Serving Institution to a “thriving” framework, where the focus is not on making sure Latinx students are ready for Berkeley, but that Berkeley is ready for them. 

Read more.

Michelle Engel-Silva Appointed CEO

Michelle Engel-Silva, EdD ’09 was named the CEO of Proteus, Inc., making her the first woman to serve in that role in the agency’s 50-year history. 

Proteus is a community-based nonprofit organization serving farmworkers and other low-income residents in the counties of Fresno, Kings, Kern, and Tulare. 

Read the full story.

Documentary Released on “Ranked: The Musical”

“Ranked: The Musical,” written by Kyle Holmes, ’10, Cred. ’11, MA ’12 and developed in part at UC Davis through Catalyst Theatre/Ground and Field Theatre Festival, is the subject of “My So-Called High School Rank,” a new documentary film produced by HBO.

“Ranked” is a nationally acclaimed musical exploring what life is really like for high schoolers today. 

Read about the documentary.   

EVENTS

Center for Community and Citizen Science Collabinars  

Robin Kodner from the Living Snow Project will present on Tuesday, October 25, 3–4 pm, on using the snow microbiome from the Pacific Northwest as a model to study how communities evolve in response to environmental change. The monthly Center for Community and Citizen Science collabinar series brings speakers from across the globe to discuss opportunities and challenges in community and citizen science. Get details about this and other collabinars. 

Graduate Group in Education Monday Seminar Series  

Join us in person at the School of Education or via Zoom for Fall 2022 Graduate Group in Education Monday seminars: 

November 7: Dr. Shulong Yan (pictured) presents “The Socio-material Nature of Failure in Collaborative Design Context”

November 14: Prof. Faheemah N. Mustafaa presents “Preliminary Findings from Ujima GIRL: A Culturally-Tailored Informal STEM Learning Initiative for Black Girls”

November 28: Dr. Sergio Sanchez presents “Teacher Conceptions on Affordances of Drama: Embodied Pedagogy for Student Learning in Diverse Classrooms”

Danny C. Martinez Featured in HSI Speaker Series

Prof. Danny C. Martinez was a featured speaker on the topic of “Leveraging Black and Latinx Youth Ingenuity for Linguistic Solidarity” for the UC Davis Hispanic Serving Institution Speaker Series. 

Held on October 4, the event was presented by The Aoki Center and UC Davis Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Watch the recording.

Show Off with School of Education Gear

Looking for a way to show off your School of Education pride? You’ll find shirts of all styles, as well as mugs, hats and more with the School of Education logo at the online UC Davis Store. Proceeds from all store sales benefit UC Davis Athletics.

PUBLICATIONS

Prof. Rebecca Ambrose co-authored the paper “Fourth Graders’ Expression of the General Case,” published in ZDM – Mathematics Education.

Postdoctoral fellow Sergio L. Sanchez and Prof. Steven Z. Athanases co-authored the article “Principled practice for drama and theater arts with multilingual learners,” published in the International Multilingual Research Journal.

Sattik Ghosh, PhD, co-authored “Remote learning slightly decreased student performance in an introductory undergraduate course on climate change,” published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.  

Prof. Megan Welsh co-authored “Timing and frequency of screening in schools: A latent variable analysis of behavioral stability over time,” published in Psychological Assessment. 

Prof. Yuuko Uchikoshi co-authored “Morphological awareness and its role in early word reading in English monolinguals, Spanish–English, and Chinese–English simultaneous bilinguals,” published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.