Graduate Student

Enrique Valencia López

Enrique Valencia López is a PhD student in the Policy, Politics and Leadership cluster at the School of Education. His research interests relate to three broad areas: the stratification of education by gender, immigration status and ethnicity; the measurement of teacher working conditions and well-being; and education in Latin America.

Before coming to Berkeley, Enrique worked for Mexico’s National Institute for Educational Evaluation and Assessment (INEE) in both the Policy and Indicators area. During that time, he co-authored Mexico’s first report on the...

Ja’Nya Banks

Ja’Nya is a second year PhD student in the Education Policy, Politics and Leadership cluster. She is a proud East Coast native, raised in the “DMV”: DC, Maryland, Virginia region. She started her career as a Special Education Teacher and case manager, eventually transitioning into roles around youth mentorship, and race and identity facilitation for educators.

As a practitioner and researcher she is interested in understanding communal ties amongst school based stakeholders (parents, students and teachers) during the plight of policy shifts. She looks at opportunities for shift in...

Weiying Li

Weiying is a PhD candidate in Learning Sciences and Human Development cluster in the School of Education at UC Berkeley, with a Designated Emphasis in New Media. Her current research focuses on: 1) designing culturally responsive pedagogy using educational technologies, 2) designing adaptive guidance using natural language processing to help students strengthen their scientific ideas.

Prior to attending UC Berkeley, Weiying received her BS in Applied Psychology from Renmin University of China. She spent the next two years exploring her career possibilities and obtained her MA in...

Jackie Lopez Santiago

Jackie is a PhD student in the School Psychology Program under the advisement of Professor Frank Worrell. Jackie’s primary research interest include: understanding the educational experiences of low income, Latine students; parent education as a mediator for Latine students academic success; and the social networks of Latine parents, particularly mothers.

Jackie is a first-generation college graduate who was born and raised in Santa Monica, Calif. She is an alumnae of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) where she began her research experience as a second year...

Hoyun Kim

Hoyun Kim is a PhD student in the Policy, Politics, and Leadership cluster at the School of Education. Her research interests lie in the experiences of students in higher education and examining postsecondary institutions as organizations: topics pertaining to student agency, equity, accessibility of higher education, and the behavior and incentives of postsecondary institutions. More broadly, she aims to understand and reason the purpose and power of higher education through her work.

Her interests are informed by her experiences attending different forms of public schools in the...

Elaine (Hua) Luo

Elaine Luo is a PhD candidate in the School Psychology Program at Berkeley School of Education (BSE). Prior to joining the BSE, Elaine received her MEd in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2020 and her BA in Education Sciences from the University of California, Irvine in 2018.

Elaine's current research focuses on adolescents' ethnic-racial identity development under the influence of various entities in their ecological system and the impact of ethnic-racial identity development on their mental health and developmental outcomes.

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Xinyu (Celia) Wei

Xinyu (Celia) Wei is a second-year Master’s student in the Learning Sciences and Human Development program at the School of Education at UC Berkeley. As an international scholar from China, Xinyu desires to help students celebrate productive struggles, leverage everyday experiences, and develop intellectual and sociocritical thinking skills to tackle worldwide equity barriers within STEM education. Her mission guides her as an emergent researcher who works with classroom teachers and students to design and implement meaningful and culturally grounded mathematics and science...

David Stevens

David Stevens is a doctoral student in the Social Research Methodologies cluster at the UC Berkeley School of Education. His research interests center on the development of alternative models for educational data analysis and their practical applications including informing instructional practices; program evaluation; school funding and resource allocation; and targeted student interventions.

His work is informed by his years as a high school science, math and Special Education teacher as well as time doing research, evaluation, and assessment at the district...

Francis Rojas

Francis Rojas has been an educational leader at the two largest and diverse high schools in the Bay Area over the last 20 year - James Logan High School in Union City, Calif., (2002-2017) and Milpitas High School in Milpitas, Calif., (2017-current). He has served in various roles from science teacher, student activities director, house principal, vice principal, and principal. He is highly skilled in Curriculum and Instruction Reform, Student Affairs and Activities, Leadership Coaching and Professional Development, Community Outreach and Organizing, Master Scheduling, Restorative...

Julia Zhu

Julia Zhu is a doctoral candidate in the Critical Studies of Race, Class, and Gender program at UC Berkeley’s School of Education. Her work explores the ways that college students in China perceive social class and meritocracy, and how social economic and educational changes have shaped their perceptions of social inequality and inequity.

Julia was born and raised in China. Prior to studying at Berkeley, she has obtained BA in Early Childhood Education and MA in Sociology of Education at Beijing Normal University. And she has studied at Hong Kong Education University and University...