Policy, Politics, & Leadership

Zachary A. Pardos

Dr. Pardos is an Associate Professor of Education at UC Berkeley studying adaptive learning and AI. His current research focuses on knowledge representation and recommender systems approaches to increasing upward mobility in postsecondary education using behavioral and semantic data.

He earned his PhD in Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a dissertation on computational models of cognitive mastery. Funded by a National Science Foundation Fellowship (GK-12), he spent extensive time with K-12 educators and students working to integrate educational technology into...

Özge Hacıfazlıoğlu

Dr. Özge Hacıfazlıoğlu is currently an adjunct professor in the Leadership Programs at the Berkeley School of Education. She serves as a leader scholar on PLI and LEAD (EdD) programs as well as PhD program in School Psychology and contributes as one of the members of communities of practice at UC Berkeley School of Education. She has recently served as a visiting professor at Berkeley School of Education. Prior to joining the BSE, Dr. Hacıfazlıoğlu worked in various academic leadership and faculty positions for 20 years. She served as a professor and a vice rector at Hasan Kalyoncu...

Michelle D. Young

Michelle D. Young, Ph.D., is the Dean of the Berkeley School of Education. Throughout her career, she has developed and sustained a reputation as an innovative, civic-minded, ethical leader with a strong commitment to diversity and social justice. Young has served in a variety of leadership positions in higher education, the nonprofit sector and for the US government, including almost 20 years as executive director of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), an international consortium of more than 100 research institutions with master’s and doctoral level programs in...

Professor of Education, Faculty of the Critical Theory Designated Emphasis

Zeus Leonardo has published numerous articles and book chapters on critical social thought in education. His articles have appeared in Educational Researcher; Race, Ethnicity, and Education; Teachers College Record; and Educational Philosophy and Theory. Some of his essays include: "Critical Social Theory and Transformative Knowledge," "The Souls of White Folk," "The Color of Supremacy," "Schooling in Racist America," "Smartness as Property" (with Alicia Broderick), and "Dis-orienting Western Knowledge." His most recent books are Edward Said and...

Tolani Britton

Tolani Britton uses quasi-experimental methods to explore the impact of policies on students’ transition from secondary school to higher education, as well as access and retention in higher education. Recent work explores whether the disproportionate increase in incarceration of Black males for drug possessions and manufacture increased gaps in college enrollment rates by race and gender over two time periods- after the passage of the Anti-Drug Act from 1986 - 1993 and after the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act from 1995 - 2000.

Prior to earning her...

Mark R. Wilson

Mark Wilson's interests focus on measurement and applied statistics. His work spans a range of issues in measurement and assessment from the development of new statistical models for analyzing measurement data, to the development of new assessments in subject matter areas such as science education, patient-reported outcomes and child development, to policy issues in the use of assessment data in accountability systems.

He has recently published three books: the first, Constructing measures: An item response modeling approach (Erlbaum), is an introduction to modern...

Gina Garcia

Dr. Gina Ann Garcia is a professor at Berkeley School of Education exploring issues of equity and justice in higher education. As an organizational theorist, she seeks to understand how Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) enact an organizational identity for serving Latine/x students and minoritized populations. She draws on qualitative methods including case studies, interviews, observations, and participatory research methods to explore how organizations change from predominately white to minoritized-serving. Dr. Garcia also examines the experiences of administrators, faculty, and staff...

Travis J. Bristol (he/him/his)

Travis J. Bristol is an associate professor of teacher education and education policy in Berkeley’s School of Education and (by courtesy) the Department of African American Studies. He is also the faculty director of the Center for Research on Expanding Educational Opportunity. Before joining Berkeley's faculty, he was a Peter Paul Assistant Professor at Boston University. Using qualitative methods, Dr. Bristol explores three...

Bruce Fuller

Note: I have retired from teaching and (with mixed emotions) no longer accept graduate students.

Bruce Fuller, a sociologist, delves into how institutions, large and small, try to lift the learning and growth of children. This prompts the question of how local actors, educators, and policy players can work smarter to lift organizations.

Recent work delves into:

The policy strategies deployed by the Trump Administration to erode the vitality of middle and low-income families. For example,...

Jose Eos Trinidad

Jose Eos Trinidad is Assistant Professor of Education Policy at the University of California Berkeley. He is a sociologist focused on the study of organizations outside schools and the study of schools as organizations. He received his Joint PhD in Sociology and Comparative Human Development from the University of Chicago.

Research
Bringing together the sociologies of organizations and education, his research interrogates education policy, civil society, and institutional change. He is author of...