Jose R. Aguilar Jr. is an enthusiastic and driven scholar-educator. He brings a wealth of experience and a solid commitment to addressing systemic issues in education. Born out of his personal experiences as a first-generation college student and a keen observer of the challenges faced by underrepresented communities, Jose has dedicated his career to dismantling the barriers that hinder the educational aspirations of Latino students.
Jose is a doctoral student and Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System (CRELS) Fellow in the Policy, Politics, and Leadership program at...
Kevin Quintero (He/Him/His) is a PhD candidate in Policy, Politics, and Leadership at UC Berkeley’s School of Education. Kevin’s research interests are using methodological and theoretical approaches to reveal the causes of political, social, and educational inequalities. His current research examines how the expansion of voting rights in California creates opportunities for minority groups to increase representation on school boards and influence educational policymaking. In particular, his dissertation shows how the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) has reshaped electoral systems for...
Emily Reich (she/her) is a third-year doctoral student in the Policy, Politics, and Leadership cluster in UC Berkeley's School of Education. She comes to graduate school with questions about the ways in which bureaucracy and the school staff who wield it shape the educational lives of marginalized and minitoritized students.
Prior to Berkeley, Emily taught Special Education in California and Israel. She received her BS in Special Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.Her current research projects include studying how schools across California made use of state and...
Nathaly Santos is a doctoral student within the Policy, Politics, and Leadership cluster at the Berkeley School of Education. Her research centers Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) and the ways in which colleges and universities adopt and embody an HSI identity at the organizational level.
These days, Nathaly is interested in exploring how HSIs operate as racialized organizations. She studies the impact of both individual and institutional factors that shape systemic policies and practices aimed at improving Latine/x student success rates and addressing...
Abby is a doctoral student in the Policy, Politics, and Leadership cluster. Her research focuses on decision making and implementation using concepts from organizational theory. Her current research project is a three-year study about how district leaders in California are using their federal and state stimulus funds. Finance scholars have found that money does matter in education, but there are still questions about how district leaders make decisions when new dollars flow and why district leaders opt to prioritize dollars toward certain programs over others. Using qualitative research...
Jose Eos Trinidad is an Assistant Professor in the Policy, Politics, and Leadership cluster of the University of California Berkeley School of Education. He is a sociologist focused on the study of organizations outside schools and the study of schools as organizations. Bringing together the sociologies of organizations and education, his research interrogates education policy, civil society, and institutional change. He received his Joint PhD in Sociology and Comparative Human Development from the University of Chicago.
Note: I have retired from teaching and (with mixed emotions) no longer accept new 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:
How schools in Los Angeles raised the achievement of students for two decades prior to the pandemic, reported in ...
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...
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...
Michelle D. Young, PhD, is dean and professor of Berkeley School of Education.
Young began her tenure at Berkeley on June 15, 2023, after serving three years as dean and professor of educational leadership and policy at Loyola Marymount University's School of Education.
At LMU, she created new positions devoted to diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism and justice and embedded that work within the school’s strategic plan. Prior to LMU, Young was a professor of educational leadership and policy, chair of the Department of Education leadership, Foundations and Policy at the...
