By Laurel White
A faculty member in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (ELPA) was one of just six faculty members campus-wide to be chosen for the The Graduate School’s inaugural Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring.
Xueli Wang, the Barbara and Glenn Thompson Professor in Educational Leadership, received the honor at a ceremony on campus last week. According to The Graduate School, the new recognition acknowledges faculty who “demonstrate exceptional commitment to supporting the growth, success, and well-being of UW–Madison graduate students.”
Across 16 years at UW–Madison, Wang has cultivated a reputation as a thoughtful, collaborative, and empowering mentor. Xiwei Zhu, one of Wang’s mentees, said the support and guidance she received at UW–Madison has carried into her career as a faculty member at San Diego State University.
“I took my first course with Dr. Wang in 2016, and even after ten years, I still remember what she said on the first day: she had very high expectations for us, matched by her unwavering support throughout the course and beyond,” Zhu said. “Importantly, this philosophy is not limited to her approach to one class; Dr. Wang has extended and deepened it through graduate mentoring, pairing high expectations with sustained, individualized support that advances students’ scholarly development and well-being.”
Anjalé Welton, Rupple-Bascom Professor of Education and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, lauded Wang’s ability to build a mentoring practice that is “at once rigorous and humane, structured and adaptive.”
Wang says the honor “carries the many students I’ve had the privilege to work with over the past 16 years and all that mentoring and mutual learning has meant in those relationships.”
Wang teaches graduate courses on community colleges, mixed methods research, and assessment in higher education. With a focus on community colleges and postsecondary STEM education, her research examines educational practices, structures, and policies that promote students’ holistic well-being and equitable access, experiences, and outcomes. Her latest book, “Delivering Promise: Equity-Driven Educational Change and Innovation in Community and Technical Colleges,” was published in 2024.