Student Gallery:

We have selected a handful of educational policy students to illustrate the range of interests and strengths of individuals recently admitted to the program.

 

Juanita B. Bautista Guerra: I am a Colombian woman who feels privileged to be an Educational Policy PhD student at MSU, supported by a Dean's Scholar Award.  While studying to become a lawyer at Universidad de los Andes, I minored in U.S. Studies; the complexities of American society and its role in world affairs have interested me since then. After completing the course work in the Masters Program for Hispano-American Literature at Universidad Javeriana, I worked at Universidad El Bosque, where I also had the opportunity of completing two Specializations: one in Higher Education Teaching and another one in Philosophy of Science. As a Dean’s Scholar, I am interested in the social, philosophical and historical foundations of education; I am also intrigued by the cultural role of education in rural contexts and its function in migratory processes in Colombia.

 

Charlae Davis: I knew I wanted my career to focus on community organizing within communities of color after receiving my Masters is in Social Work. I worked as a college counselor and later founded an African American mentorship program where I began to realize that non-academic considerations, needed to be addressed before our mentorship program could academically support our youth. It was clear that a holistic approach to supporting our youth, their families and their community was necessary. There continues to be some ambiguity between Policy and Practice and I see endless possibilities when community voices are heard within policy efforts and reform.  As a University Distinguished Fellows Recipient, I am interested in designing and working toward the implementation of effective and culturally sensitive policy; partnered with community organizing, as well as holistic supplemental programs within urban/city areas.

 

Tracy Davis: As a recent graduate of Georgia State University with a B.A. in Economics, I am excited to have the opportunity to attend Michigan State University for a Ph.D. in Educational Policy with the assistance of a Dean’s Scholar award.  Early in my undergraduate career, I recognized my passion for research in education inequity and reform. While in Atlanta, I served as the Campus Campaign Coordinator for Teach for America and volunteered at a local elementary school for a tutoring program developing 4th grade lesson plans and leading the tutors and students.  Through these experiences, I became cognizant of the critical dilemma facing the nation: an indubitable lack of equal education and opportunities for all children.  My research interests thus include education inequality, poverty, and school funding.  I would like to consider existing policies and their impact on producing ample progress in academic achievement in economically disadvantaged populations. Specifically, I wish to examine the funding mechanisms supporting American schools, and the types of public goods available to poverty-stricken communities, which allow them access to higher quality education.  Beginning next year, I will be supported as a fellow of the new Economics of Education doctoral specialization with a grant MSU received from IES.

 

Todd Drummond: I have a BA in History from Indiana University and a graduate degree in Political Science from the University of Florida. After serving in the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan, I worked for the American Councils for International Education, an NGO in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. I served as the director of Kyrgyzstan's National Testing Initiative, a project which resulted in the development of a non-governmental assessment center and the creation of a new university admissions regime in the Republic. My academic interests are comparative education, bias and construct equivalence issues in multi-lingual assessments, high stakes assessment policies and the impact of testing on learning and education systems, and the history of education in Russia and Eurasia.

 

Monica Evans: As an undergraduate in MSU’s James Madison College, I studied Social Relations and African Studies, and then went on to complete my teacher education training. I worked for a number of years as an elementary school teacher, and later as a middle school library media specialist and social studies teacher. I am now combining my interests in social policy, urban education, and equal education opportunity policies and practices of democratic nations. I am particularly interested in the educational experiences of people of the African Diaspora. I received a Fulbright Dissertation Year Fellowship and am completing my data collection work in Brazil.

Erin Grogan: After teaching in southern Louisiana and working as a charter school administrator in West Philadelphia, I became very interested in how schools and districts recruit and hire teachers; specifically, I am interested in whether teacher hiring is conducted in such a way that prospective teachers can determine whether or not their goals and objectives are shared by the schools in which they work. Consequently, my research interests involve understanding both how schools- as complex organizations with varying degrees of autonomy- plan for and conduct teacher hiring to assemble a like-minded faculty, and how teachers- as individuals looking to achieve a "good fit" at work- make decisions about employers. My research focuses on these issues in urban charter and traditional public schools, and I am grateful to be supported by a University Distinguished Fellowship. My interests are largely shaped by my own experience entering teaching through Teach for America, as well as working for The New Teacher Project, another national organization working with approximately 20 school districts to recruit, select, train, and hire teachers.

 

Seung-Hwan Ham: My research interests are in curricular policy and teacher education from comparative and international perspectives. Before coming to Michigan State University as an Erickson Research Fellow, I finished my master’s degree in the sociology of education, and then I worked as a college lecturer teaching educational foundations courses in Korea. I have been involved in research projects on several different topics, which relate to: teacher preparation and teacher knowledge; educational equity issues at an international level; special education policy and practice; and global-local dynamics in educational policy discourse formation.

 

Justina Judy: During my undergraduate experience at the University of Missouri studying political science and economics, I began to focus specifically on education policy. I had the opportunity to intern with the state legislature and research education finance. I also studied comparative education policies within red and blue states and completed a senior research project in special education policy. I left the books behind to get a ground level perspective on education with the Teach for America program. I taught kindergarten and first grade in Houston, Texas, and was named my school’s Teacher of the Year in 2009. I have the opportunity, here at Michigan State, to combine my passion and experience to contribute to the field of education policy.  As a fellow of the Economics of Education Program, I would like to research teacher labor market issues such as mobility and retention of teachers in high-need districts, effectiveness and impacts of teacher incentive-pay programs, and how accountability policies affect teacher motivation and success.

 

Michelle Mwalimu: As an undergraduate at Stanford University, I studied international relations with a focus on comparative cultures and societies. Through the interdisciplinary honors program in the School of Education, I wrote a senior thesis on successes and challenges to HIV and AIDS education in Arusha, Tanzania, where I had spent two summers as an educator and researcher. I was attracted to MSU’s Education Policy program because of the wide variety of options offered to me in international studies in education, African studies and languages, and strong faculty expertise. With support from theMichigan State University Enrichment Fellowship and a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, I am conducting a study on perceptions of quality and opportunity among Zambia’s orphans and vulnerable children in community-based schools. I received a Fulbright Dissertation Year Fellowship and am completing my data collection in Africa.

 

Kaitlin Obenauf: While earning a B.A. degrees in both Psychology and Economics at Michigan State University, I received awards for my paper discussing women and the gender gap in math and science. To give back to my community, I taught second and third grade on Chicago’s south side for Teach for America.  I assumed leadership roles in Chicago and secured grant funding for additional resources. Connecting learning to real world circumstances by instituting a classroom mini-economy, I helped raise my students’ reading and math achievement scores dramatically. I was granted two Segal Americorp Education Awards for national and community service in teaching.  As a Dean’s Scholar in Educational Policy and a recipient of the new IES award in the economics of education at MSU, I am honored to belong to a community of scholars and hope to further my research on alternative certification, teacher preparation, and teacher culture and its affect on one’s job satisfaction.

 

Dan Roberts: Upon graduating from Vanderbilt University, I worked at a middle school in the Chicago Public Schools, a teacher trainer and health facilitator in Guatemala with the Peace Corps and as an ESL teacher in Taiwan. I returned to Vanderbilt to earn a master's degree in International Education Policy and Management. After graduating, I worked for the Institute of International Education's Mexico City office as a researcher and administrator for its higher education scholarship programs. Before entering the education policy program as a Dean's Scholar at MSU, I conducted field research in the Lacandon jungle in Chiapas, Mexico about indigenous education reform in southern Mexico. With support from
Michigan State University's Summer Research Fellowship, currently I am
conducting a study about community-driven education in Tanzania. My research interests include teacher training in developing nations, community-based education, gender issues in education and sustainability-based school curricula.

 

Andrew Saultz: As an undergraduate student at Oregon State University, I studied political science with a focus on state and federal educational policy.  While President of the Associated Students of OSU, and Chair of the Oregon Student Association, I had the opportunity to serve as an ex-officio member of the Oregon State Board of Higher Education.  This experience developed my passion for educational equity and community organizing.  Following my graduation from Lewis and Clark College with a master’s degree in Teaching Social Studies, I taught high school social studies for three years in Okemos, Michigan.  My interest in gaining a global perspective on education grew as I was blest with both the opportunity to teach in southern Poland and visit Ecuador on a Fulbright Group Program Abroad.  I was attracted to MSU’s Educational Policy program because of the faculty expertise and the incredibly supportive community.  The program has provided me with a summer research appointment, a seamless transition from my career as a teacher, and a number of unique educational opportunities.  As a University Distinguished Fellow, my research interests include teacher collaboration, school accountability, the politics of education and curriculum design. 

 

Min Sun: I have a MA in Education Administration and Economics and have been a visiting scholar in the UK and the Netherlands sponsored by the European Commission. Here at Michigan State University, I am pursuing a dual doctoral program in both Educational Policy and Measurement and Quantitative Methods. My academic interests are currently in 1) using advanced statistical techniques, such as social network analysis and value-added models, to investigate educational policy issues and 2) in contributing to the development of quantitative research methods in
social science.

 

 

Sarah Winchell: I am supported in the Educational Policy program by a Dean’s Scholar Award, along with grants, fellowships, and annual stipends to attend education conferences.  I have a B.A. in English and Women's Studies from the University of Georgia and a M.S. in Teaching from Pace University in New York City. I most recently lived in New York City where I was a middle school English teacher in Brooklyn (as part of Teach for America) and a coordinator of a high school enrichment program.  My current research focuses on teacher performance evaluation, teacher pay, and the effects of standardized testing on teachers and students. I won a 2009 Summer Research Fellowship to support my work on the effects of using value-added methodology to measure teacher performance. I have an assistantship with Professor Rebecca Jacobsen, with whom I have worked on research related to student citizenship outcomes and school segregation's relationship to political and civic participation.  I also served as an intern in the Michigan Department of Education's Office of Professional Preparation, where I worked on a teacher preparation standards alignment project.