New cohort of Community Partner Fellows to support local organizations
Six doctoral students at the University of Washington College of Education will bolster the research and program evaluation capacity of local organizations serving youth starting in fall 2019 as the members of the second cohort of the College’s Community Partner Fellows program.
Members of the second cohort are Kaleb Germinaro, Ari Hock, Lindsey Kaiser, Ishmael Miller, Camille Ungco and Jiaying Xiao. In addition, two members of the first cohort of the Community Partner Fellows program (Grace Gonzales and Elizabeth Schuster) recently started their doctoral studies at the College.
The Community Partner Fellows program supports the development of the next generation of education researchers and scholars while at the same time supporting the work of community-based organizations dedicated to closing opportunity gaps in education.
“As a public college of education, partnering with local communities and organizations to strengthen educational opportunity is a core part of our mission,” said Mia Tuan, dean of UW College of Education. “Each of our Community Partner Fellows brings a deep commitment to equity to their work with our partners, which they pair with exceptional research training. We are so excited to have these outstanding scholars bridge research and practice in service of enhancing positive outcomes for young people throughout our region.”
Read more about each of the Fellows below.
Kaleb Germinaro
Kaleb Germinaro is a doctoral student in UW’s learning sciences and human development program whose research interests center on how to promote mental health equity for minority groups. In particular, Germinaro aims to better understand how learning can support positive mental health in particular contexts with different subgroups of individuals transitioning out of various identities.
Germinaro will serve as Fellow with the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition, a coalition of community-based organizations, schools, educators, community leaders, parents and caregivers, and concerned residents working to improve education for all children, especially those in Southeast Seattle and those farthest away from opportunities.
Through his work, Germinaro wants to serve people in pursuit of their dreams, making sure they have the tools and skills to do so in a healthy way and building trauma resilience.
Grace Gonzales
Grace Gonzales is doctoral student in language, literacy and culture whose research interests include multilingual literacy practices; parent and family involvement, especially in immigrant/refugee communities; and the analysis of dual-language bilingual programs through a race and equity lens.
Gonzales will start her fellowship placement in 2020.
In addition to her work at the UW, Gonzales is the submissions editor for Rethinking Schools magazine and co-editor of Rethinking Bilingual Education. Originally from Seattle, she worked for nine years as a bilingual elementary school teacher in Oakland and San Francisco, Calif., and Guatemala City, Guatemala. In addition to her research, she hopes to continue to work in teacher education and contribute to the preparation of a diverse group of future educators who are better able to serve multilingual public school students in culturally sustaining ways.
Ari Hock
Ari Hock is a doctoral student in learning sciences and human development whose research interests focus on how people learn in informal contexts and across settings, and how digital technologies mediate learning.
Hock will start his fellowship placement in 2021.
He is a research assistant on the NSF-funded Digital Badges for STEM education project at the Pacific Science Center, which aims to create opportunities for youth in underrepresented groups to study and get jobs in the STEM fields, and previously worked on the digital engagement team at KaBOOM!, a national non-profit dedicated to making sure all kids have great places to play.
After completing his PhD, Hock aims to continue research that taps into people’s inherent ingenuity and creative drive.
Lindsey Kaiser
Lindsey Kaiser is a doctoral student in educational policy, organizations and leadership whose research lies at the intersection of educational justice leadership, community partnerships, culturally responsive practices, stereotype threat and school systems. She will serve as Fellow with the Technology Access Foundation, which works to improve access to STEM and technology fields for students of color and underrepresented communities in Washington state.
Kaiser comes to the UW after 10 years serving students, parents and teachers as an administrator, instructional coach, special education teacher and elementary teacher in public schools ranging from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin to Texas.
Through her research and teaching of future social justice leaders, Kaiser aim to galvanize communities to dismantle the barriers that have led to systemic racism and oppression in the world of education and collectively create equitable school systems that seek to close the opportunity gap.
Ishmael Miller
Ishmael Miller is a doctoral student in the UW’s educational policy, organizations and leadership program whose research focuses on race, equity and leading out of school time organizations — school clubs, summer camps and afterschool programs. His goal is to design leadership practices and craft learning environments rooted in providing equitable experiences to all youth.
Miller will serve as a Fellow with School’s Out Washington, which is dedicated to building community systems to support quality afterschool, youth development and summer programs for Washington’s children and youth ages 5 through young adulthood.
Miller has experience working in a variety of out of school time organizations as a volunteer, front-line staff member, program manager, advisory board member and academic researcher. Additionally, he has worked toward providing systemic equity at multiple universities and out of school time organizations by serving as a curriculum designer, student organization adviser, race and equity divisional committee member and bias incident response team member.
Miller has been selected as a Jackson Scholar by the University of Council of Education Administration and is a recipient of the UW’s Richard and Rose Plecki Endowment in Educational Leadership.
Elizabeth Schuster
Elizabeth Schuster is a doctoral student in language, literacy and culture whose research interests focus on serving immigrant communities and ways that schools can best support newcomer students academically, socially and emotionally. In particular, she is exploring ways to help newcomer students with limited formal education experience more success and joy in formal academic contexts by elevating content knowledge and skills that are not traditionally privileged in schools.
Schuster will start her fellowship placement in 2020.
She recently moved to Washington from the Bay Area, where she spent the past nine years teaching high school social studies to recent immigrant students, coaching new teachers and serving in leadership positions around issues of student support. For six of those years, she was a member of the Internationals Schools Network at San Francisco International High School, a public school specifically designed to support newcomer students.
Camille Ungco
Camille Ungco is an incoming doctoral student in curriculum and instruction whose research interests focus on historic U.S. colonial language education and its intergenerational impact on Filipino American K-12 students in English Language Learner (ELL) programs.
Ungco will start her fellowship placement in 2021.
Ungco taught high school English in East Java, Indonesia, as a Fulbright teaching assistant and, upon returning to the U.S., taught 4th grade English Language Arts at a Title I school in the Clark County (Nev.) School District.
A second generation Filipino American, Ungco hopes to work in partnership with local Filipino communities of South Seattle with the goal of contributing to the representation of Filipino Americans in education and expanding on existing narratives of immigrant and ELL student populations.
Jiaying Xiao
Jiaying Xiao will enter the UW’s doctoral program in measurement and statistics in fall 2019. Her research interests center on computerized adaptive testing, cognitive diagnostic modeling and their applications in educational assessment and learning, including quantifying abstract psychological attributes to understand individual differences and delving into methodology advancement to enhance test fairness and security.
Xiao will start her fellowship placement in 2021.
Xiao is interested in equity-focused research projects to help underrepresented groups (e.g., students of color, girls and young women) get equal educational opportunities and improve the quality of programs for students of color and underrepresented communities.
The first cohort of Community Partner Fellows started their placements in Fall 2018: Cory Campbell with the Boys & Girls Clubs of King County, Lana Huizar with Washington STEM and Per-Chun Liao with Pacific Science Center.
Community-based organizations interested in joining the Community Partner Fellows initiative, an effort of the College’s Unite:Ed alliance of community and education partners, should contact Unite:Ed Director Dana Arviso. For more information about funding community partnership work at the College, contact Grant Twitchell, director for advancement.
Contact
Dustin Wunderlich, Director of Marketing and Communications
206-543-1035, dwunder@uw.edu