By Laurel White
Six members of the School of Education community have been chosen as recipients of 2026 NAEd/Spencer Dissertation and Postdoctoral Fellowships, prestigious national fellowships that support promising education research by early-career scholars.
Supported by the National Academy of Education (NAEd) and Spencer Foundation, the fellowships provide funding and professional development to advance projects that address critical issues in education.
“The NAEd/Spencer Dissertation and Postdoctoral Fellowships represent significant investments in the fellows and the future of education research,” said Okhee Lee, chair of the NAEd Professional Development Committee, in a prepared statement. “These fellowships are more crucial than ever given the recent dramatic declines in education research funding. It is a privilege to work with our new fellows who will contribute to education research and scholarship.”
Faculty members Christopher Saldaña and Icy Zhang received postdoctoral fellowships. Doctoral students Benjamin Lebovitz, Curtis O’Dwyer, Farah Basit, and Tony DelaRosa received dissertation fellowships.
Saldaña‘s award will support his project, “Platform Promises, District Realities: Examining How Organizational Capacity Shapes the Adoption of K-12 Educational Technology.” Saldaña is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. His research examines the relationship between K-12 school finance and educational opportunity, focusing particularly on the educational experiences of minoritized and marginalized students.
Zhang will utilize her funding on her project, “Bridging the Research-Practice Gap in Statistics and Data Science Education: Co-design ‘Embodied’ Programming Notebooks with Instructors Across Institutions.” Zhang’s research investigates the cognitive and developmental processes that underlie learning in complex domains, such as STEM domains, with a focus on translating theories into real-world instructional practices.
Lebovitz‘s award will support his dissertation, “Contesting Erasure: How Youth, Caregivers, and Adults Disrupt Trans and LGBTQ+ Student Exclusion in Wisconsin.” Lebovitz is a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.
O’Dwyer will use the funding on his dissertation, “A Science Education Genealogy of Black Possibility: Historicizing Black Science Teachers’ Unsettlings of Antiblack Disciplinary Norms (1900–1974).” O’Dwyer is a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
Basit‘s award will support her dissertation, “Schools, Sex & Silence: A Comparative Ethnography of the Pedagogies of Gendered Shame in Lahore, Pakistan.” Basit is a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Policy Studies.
DelaRosa will use his award to advance his dissertation, “In The Belly of the Beast: ACT 266 & The Policy Advocacy of HMoob/Hmong & Asian American K-12 Studies in Wisconsin.” DelaRosa is a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.