Paty Abril-Gonzalez
Mentor: Carmen Medina
Paty Abril-Gonzalez is Assistant Professor in Bilingual and Bicultural Education at the University of Texas in Austin. Her research agenda focuses on broadening teacher preparation for bilingual Latinx students, specifically in writing instruction. She uses multimodal approaches, particularly visual arts and digital tools to validate identity development, validation, and emotional healing. Her work is motivated by, both personal and professional experiences in bilingual education and art history in Colorado. Altogether, she threads community resources, artistic practices, and emotional expressions grounded in Chicana Feminist orientations to reimagine bilingualism and practices for Latinx youth in elementary public education.Earl Aguilera
Mentor: P. Zitlali Morales
Earl Aguilera is Assistant Professor at the Kremen School of Education and Human Development at California State University, Fresno. His work examines issues at the intersection of literacy, educational equity, and technology integration, particularly for students from historically marginalized backgrounds. Prior to his time at Fresno State, he worked as a high school English teacher and K-12 reading specialist. His scholarship has appeared in publications such as Literacy Research: Theory, Method, & Practice, Literacy Today, and Pedagogies: An International Journal.
Idalia Nuñez Cortez
Mentor: Carmen MartÃnez-Roldán
Dr. Idalia Nuñez is an Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with specialization in Bilingual-Bicultural Education from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on exploring translanguaging, bilingualism, and biliteracy, and bilingual/ESL pre- and in-service teacher education. Dr. Nuñez’s work has been recognized and supported by Frederick Eby Research Award in Humanistic Studies in Education, Gates Millennium Fellowship Program, The UT Graduate Fellowship, multiple AERA 2019 Dissertation Awards, and NABE 2019 Dissertation Award.Rebecca Linares
Mentor: Patricia Baquedano-López
Rebecca E. Linares is Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Montclair State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She currently teaches elementary literacy courses as well as courses in second language acquisition and content instruction in bilingual and sheltered English classrooms. Her research examines the at-school and out-of-school literacy practices of transnational newcomer students with a focus on how students access and utilize existing literacy knowledge in their native languages to negotiate their understanding of English and to mediate their participation in classroom-based literacy practices.
Bianca Nightengale-Lee
Mentor: Latrise Johnson
Bianca Nightengale-Lee is Assistant Professor in the department of Curriculum Culture & Educational Inquiry at Florida Atlantic University. As a critically engaged community scholar, her research explores critical pedagogy as it relates to socially conscious curriculum development for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Within teacher preparation, she examines what it might mean to approach issues of inequity, privilege, and oppression with teachers through critical inquiry and intersectionality. Within schools and community, she investigates how to improve the literacy outcomes of African-American students through hip-hop based literacy. With each facet of her work Dr. Nightengale-Lee is committed to preparing the next generation of educators to meet the demands of 21st century contexts, which reflect the racially, socially, and politically charged structures that shape education, and the pathways that lead to more humanizing modes of pedagogy.Tiffany Nyachae
Mentor: Jennifer Dandridge Turner
Dr. Nyachae is Assistant Professor in the Department of Elementary Education, Literacy, and Educational Leadership at Buffalo State College (SUNY) where she teaches literacy, diversity, and social foundations courses. As a Black feminist pedagogue and interdisciplinary, community-based scholar, she employs literacy and curriculum to engage race and justice in various urban contexts. This agenda is evident in her research on supporting the racial literacy, social justice ideological becoming, and classroom practice of urban teachers. Dr. Nyachae’s publications have appeared in journals such as Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Multicultural Learning and Teaching, Gender and Education, and Qualitative Inquiry.
Alicia Rusoja
Mentor: Danny MartÃnez
Dr. Rusoja is Assistant Professor in the Justice, Community and Leadership Program at Saint Mary’s College of California. She earned a PhD in Reading/Writing/Literacy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Her interests lie at the intersection of critical literacy and pedagogy, human rights advocacy, and practitioner inquiry as a methodology to resist coloniality in research, education and organizing. Her work has been published in scholarly and community-based journals, and her study on the intergenerational literacy, learning and teaching practices mobilized by Latinx immigrants organizing for their rights was awarded distinction at PennGSE, where she also received the Ralph C. Preston Award for Scholarship and Teaching Contributing to Social Justice.Tran Nguyen Templeton
Mentor: Ana Christina de Silva Iddings
Tran Nguyen Templeton is Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Studies at the University of North Texas. She received her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University. Interested in the production of the child through dominant and critical discourses of childhood, Tran employs ethnographic and visual methods to study children’s co-constructions of their own complex identities in/through photography, play, and literacy practices. She also examines how adults situate young children in relation to critical forms of curriculum. Tran is a 2017-2018 AERA Minority Dissertation Fellow and has published her work in Children’s Geographies, Harvard Educational Review, and Language Arts.