May 2019

AERA has named two early career scholars as AERA Congressional Fellows for 2019–2020. The Fellows will spend a year in Washington, D.C., working as staff for a member of Congress or a Congressional committee, and will use their education research expertise, outside of the academic setting, to inform public policy. This will be the fourth year of the AERA Congressional Fellowship initiative.

The two 2019–2020 AERA Congressional Fellows are Carolina Silva Martinez (Washington State University) and Wei-Ling Sun (University of Texas at Austin). Both are early career scholars, and their fellowships will begin on September 1.

A 2014 AERA Undergraduate Fellow, Carolina Silva Martinez recently completed her doctoral degree in cultural studies and social thought at the Washington State University College of Education. Her research has focused on both immigrant students and Native American students. These interests are reflected in her doctoral dissertation, “We Are Going to Keep Building and Rising: Inside the Immigrant Youth Movement in Rural Washington.”

Wei-Ling Sun is currently an Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at El Paso. She earned her Ph.D. in educational policy from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018. Her research areas include addressing inequities based on race and gender in urban settings, and her dissertation, “Race to Equity: Leadership, Politics, and School Disciplinary Policies,” examines how school leaders make sense of discipline policies, and the implications for equity.

“Now starting its fourth year, the AERA Congressional Fellowship provides an invaluable opportunity for connecting research to policymakers, and more broadly for expanding the footprint and understanding of the field,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine. 

The two 2018–2019 AERA Congressional Fellows, Kendrick Davis and Rachel Feldman, will finish their year working on Capitol Hill on August 31. Davis spent the past year working in the office of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA); Feldman worked for Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). At the 2019 AERA Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada, Davis and Feldman were featured panelists during the presidential session “Connecting Research to Policy on Capitol Hill—The True Story From Education Research Fellows.”