Kemryn Janall-Louise Lawrence is a doctoral student in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, pursuing a Ph.D. with a concentration in Policy, Politics, and Leadership. Her research interests center on expanding college access, strengthening educational pathways, and advancing institutional strategies that support student success from K–12 through higher education. Central to her vision is the strengthening of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and building pipelines that connect underrepresented students to these institutions and beyond....
Ja’Nya is a fifth-year PhD Candidate, using mixed methods to explore public school survival and education-based political advocacy in marginalized communities, with a focus on historically Black public schools. Outside of her dissertation, her research explores the ways that Special Education parental rights and safeguards are taken up differently by Black and Latinx families, and the impact of income and language in the advocacy space.
Her other research includes school finance, special education disproportionality, dis/ability studies, and organizational change. She is a former...
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 institutional oppression....
Emily Reich (she/her) is a third-year doctoral student in the Policy, Politics, and Leadership cluster at UC Berkeley's School of Education. Her research examines how bureaucracy and educational policy unfold on the ground for marginalized and minoritized students and the school systems and staff who serve them.
Prior to Berkeley, Emily taught Special Education in California and Israel. She holds a BS in Special Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Emily's dissertation investigates the replacement of the Palestinian National Authority curriculum with Israeli...
Janelle Scott (she/her) is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the School of Education and African American Studies Department. She holds the Robert J. and Mary Catherine Birgeneau Distinguished Chair in Educational Disparities, and is the Chair of the Race, Diversity, and Educational Policy Cluster of the Othering and Belonging Institute. She is the Associate Dean for Students in the College of Letters and Science. Scott earned a PhD in Education Policy from the University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and a BA in...
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, 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...
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.
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...
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...
