June 2018 

AERA has announced the recipients of the 2018–19 AERA Minority Dissertation Fellowship in Education Research and Travel Awards. The program, targeted for members of racial and ethnic groups historically underrepresented in education research, offers dissertation fellowships to outstanding minority graduate students and provides mentoring and guidance toward the completion of their doctoral studies. An important aim of the fellowship is to enhance racial and ethnic diversity of faculty, scholars, and researchers who study topics in education research.

The seven new fellows and five travel awardees are in the final stages of their dissertation studies across a broad range of topics in education research (see Table 1). This year’s funded projects examine areas such as youth identity, school violence, children’s literacy, linguistics, and social and family outcomes of higher education policy. Many of the studies examine educational issues among racial and ethnic minority students, their communities, and their schooling. These studies apply rigorous methods in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods in their design and analysis. It is anticipated that these studies will make a significant contribution to education research and policy as well as inform teachers, clinicians, and other practitioners who work with children, youth, and young adults.

2018-19 AERA Minority Dissertation Fellows in Education Research and Travel Awardees
Recipient	Doctoral Institution	Dissertation Title
Dissertation Fellows
Kenly Brown	University of California, Berkeley	“Disciplinary Dumping Ground”: The Construction of Black Girlhood in an Alternative School
JaNay Brown-Wood	University of California, Davis	Analyzing Whether Race in a Picture Book Can Impact Children’s Narrative Quality and Book Preference
Ethan Chang	University of California, Santa Cruz	More Than Irony: The Politics of Digital Technologies and 21st Century Education Reforms
Rebeca Gamez	Johns Hopkins University	Understanding Latino/a and African American Students’ Ethnic and Racial Boundary Making in Two Schools Located in the New South
Frances Kvietok Dueñas	University of Pennsylvania	Youth, Language Policy and Quechua Maintenance in the Urban Peruvian Andes
David Mickey-Pabello	University of Michigan	The Unintended Consequences of State-Level Affirmative Action Bans
Jonte Myers	University of Florida	Teacher Qualifications and Student Math Achievement in Secondary Schools: An Exploratory Study
Travel Awardees
Sonia Alves	Harvard University	Understanding the Association Between Community Violence Exposure and Youth Academic Functioning
José Del Real Viramontes	The University of Texas at Austin	Exploring the Cultural Production of the Transfer Receptive Culture by Latinx Community College Transfer Students at a Predominantly White Institution in Texas
Jean Park	Teachers College, Columbia University	“Why Asians Succeed Here”: The History of Education in New York City’s Korean-American Community, 1965-1990
Nicole Rangel	University of California, Berkeley	Public Intellectuals in the Era of Privatization: An Examination of Neoliberalism’s Effect on Academic Freedom at Two Public Ivies
Jenny Zhang	University of California, Berkeley	Literacy in Development Discourse and Practice: Comparative Studies in Indonesia

Fellows are awarded a $19,000 stipend to complete their dissertation research and training. The fellows and travel awardees also receive a $1,000 stipend for travel expenses to attend the 2019 AERA Annual Meeting in Toronto, where they will meet with the Selection Committee members and other senior scholars as part of a mentoring and career development workshop. Awardees will also present their work to the education research community in a poster session during the 2019 Annual Meeting.

The AERA Council established the Minority Dissertation Fellowship Program in Education Research in 1991, setting aside funds to support stipends, Annual Meeting travel, and professional development. AERA and its leadership are committed to providing additional resources to the program through 2020, continuing its support for racial and ethnic minority scholars.

The AERA Minority Dissertation fellows are selected based on their potential as faculty members or education research scholars, the dissertation study’s contribution to education research, rigor of research methods used to conduct the study, and implications of the research. Recent fellows are now faculty members at leading research institutions, including Iowa State University, Southern Methodist University, University of Colorado–Boulder, and the University of Minnesota. Other recent fellows are conducting research at university-based research centers or applied research organizations. Their research appears in several peer-reviewed journals and has contributed to our understanding of educational issues.

“The new cohort of fellows are developing research that promises to enhance and expand our understanding of important and timely topics in education,” said George L. Wimberly, AERA Director of Professional Development and Diversity Officer. “We are pleased and excited to support this research and help build research capacity among these outstanding graduate students.”

The application deadline for the next Minority Dissertation Fellowship competition is October 15, 2018. For further details about the program, eligibility requirements, and application instructions, visit the AERA Funding Opportunities webpage or email the AERA Fellowships Program at fellowships@aera.net.