The National Academy of Education (NAEd) announced the recipients of its 2020 NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Awards in a news release posted on Wednesday, June 10.
And once again, scholars with UW–Madison’s School of Education were well represented in this annual announcement.
Qing Liu, Huimin Wang, and Choua P. Xiong — each of them PhD candidates with the Department of Educational Policy Studies — were named NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellows. Selected from a pool of 429 applicants, the 35 Dissertation Fellows each receive $27,500 for a period of up to two years to complete their dissertations and also attend professional development retreats.
Liu is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Education Policy Studies and the Department of History who specializes in Asian American history, intellectual history, and history of higher education. Originally from China, Liu is now writing a dissertation focusing on Chinese migrant scholars in American universities during the 1950s and 1960s, and examining how their knowledge production shaped, and was shaped by, cold war geopolitics. Liu’s work being funded is titled, “Stranded: Chinese Migrant Scholars in American Universities, 1940-1970.”
Wang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies whose interests center on the histories of education reform, childhood, and psychology in the 20th century United States. In her research and scholarship, Wang aims to unpack the underlying assumptions, complicated contours, and socio-political implications of past education policies, and to bring historical insights to current education debates through deep contextualization of categories, classifications, and norms. Her dissertation explores the history of emotional interventions in U.S. public schools from World War I to 1950. Wang’s work being funded is titled, “Creating the Well-Adjusted Citizen: The Human Sciences and Public Schools in the United States, World War I – 1950.”
Xiong is a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies whose approach to research is rooted in her refugee experience and the desire to understand the stories of displacement told by HMoob people. Xiong is interested in the ways displaced youth and communities utilize education to negotiate belonging and demand structural changes. Moreover, she considers how such processes intersect with ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, and class. Her work is informed by her activism as a researcher and educator within the HMoob and Southeast Asian communities in community-based educational spaces, schools, and higher education. Xiong’s work being funded is titled, “The Home Called HMoob: Sociocultural Citizenship and Belonging in a Northern Thai School.”
Minero-Meza receives Outstanding Women of Color Award from UW–Madison
Laura Minero-Meza, a PhD student with the School of Education’s Department of Counseling Psychology, received an Outstanding Women of Color Award from UW–Madison in January.
Besides her role as a student, Minero-Meza is a counseling psychology researcher and scholar, therapist, teacher, mentor, public lecturer, and activist. She has partnered in national studies on undocumented youth and the lived experience in the intersection of gender identity, race, citizenship status, and mental health.
Additionally, Minero-Meza is an advocate for the LGBTQAI+ community and undocumented students like herself at all levels.
One colleague describes the way she blends groundbreaking scholarship with personal experience and compassionate activism as “intellectual courage.” Minero-Meza has been influential in Madison and beyond as a Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice collaborator and a person who has used her own story to raise awareness and debunk misconceptions about undocumented immigrants.
Minero-Meza co-founded the first UW–Madison student organization for undocumented students and a scholarship to directly support these students, all while working through her own financial challenges. She also created a support group to connect middle school students with mentors to support their Latinx and immigrant identities, and collaborates with UW administration on supporting the safety and legal needs of undocumented students on campus.
Minero-Meza at the time was working as an intern at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior.
To learn about all of this year’s Outstanding Women of Color Award winners, check out this news post.
Around the School …
• Tina Marshalek’s was named a Truman Scholar, one of the most prestigious undergraduate honors in the country. Marshalek is majoring in community and nonprofit leadership and political science, with a certificate from the School of Education’s Department of Educational Policy Studies.
Created by Congress in 1975, the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation honors the late president by working to select and support the next generation of public service leaders. Marshalek is one of 62 national winners this year. She will receive a $30,000 scholarship toward graduate school and the opportunity to participate in professional development programming.
After graduating in May 2021, Marshalek plans to pursue a master of public affairs with a concentration in educational policy at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW–Madison. She aspires to specialize in the area of homeschooling, both to highlight its strengths and to rectify what she views as its shortcomings. To learn more about Marshalek, check out this University Communications report.
• UW–Madison named student Shehrose Charania as its 2020 Newman Civic Fellow. Charania joins 290 community-committed students representing Campus Compact member colleges and universities from 39 states, Washington D.C., Mexico, and Greece.
Newman Civic Fellows are nominated by university presidents and chancellors for their potential for public leadership and commitment to finding solutions for challenges facing communities throughout the country. Fellows participate in leadership development, networking events, and a Newman Civic Fellows national conference.
Charania, an undergraduate student with the School of Education, was nominated by UW Chancellor Rebecca Blank for her commitment to fight health inequities that affect immigrant and refugee populations.
Majoring in the Department of Kinesiology’s health promotion and health equity program, Charania combines her identity as a Pakistani Muslim American and her passion for health promotion to combat health inequities. Her work is informed by her first-hand experience as a teenage immigrant living in Chicago, and taking on the role of ‘patient navigator’ to help her parents navigate the complex healthcare system.
• Lei Zheng, a PhD student with the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, will receive the Graduate Student Award from the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Critical Issues in Cultural Studies special interest group (SIG). Zheng defended her thesis in January and graduated this past May.
Zheng explains that her research weaves science and technology studies (STS) and political geography with curriculum studies. This work analyzes how different infrastructures — such as mass media, school curriculum, intergovernmental agenda, and academic research — are historically constructed to translate sciences of control into social control through pedagogical space. AERA reviewers felt that Zheng’s research “posed important and intriguing considerations for the field, and that it provided an examination that is much-needed, especially given STEM’s prevalence and intensity.” Her research being recognized is titled, “Can problem-solving be problematized: performative phantasmagrams of crisis in U.S. STEM education reform.”