June 2023
AERA has announced the 2023–24 recipients of its Minority Dissertation Fellowships and Travel Awards. In a highly selective process, AERA’s Minority Dissertation Fellowship in Education Research Program awards fellowships or travel funding to members of racial and ethnic groups historically underrepresented in education research, and offers mentoring and guidance toward the completion of their doctoral studies. An important aim of the fellowship is to enhance the racial and ethnic diversity of faculty, scholars, and researchers across the education research field.
The 15 new awardees are in the final stages of their dissertation studies across a broad range of education research topics, such as familial influences on students’ academic development, college campus climate, issues affecting minority-serving institutions, and student and teacher experiences in K-12 schools. Many of these studies focus on specific racial or ethnic groups or view their subject matter through a social equity lens. The awardees are from a range of disciplines and subfields across education research, including curriculum and instruction, higher education, psychology, and sociology.
Demeturie Toso-Lafaele Gogue University of California–Los Angeles
The Undercurrents of Institutionalization: How AANAPISIs Navigate a Racialized Process to Promote Pacific Islander Student Success
Samantha Ha DiMuzio Boston College
Beyond Safe Space: A Philosophical and Participatory Design Inquiry into the Affordances of “Safe-Enough” Places for Undergraduate Students of Color
Theodore Johnson University of Nebraska–Omaha
Siloed Voices with a Resounding Experience: A Phenomenological Analysis of the Experiences of Black HBCU Aviation Students
Michelle Para University of California–Santa Cruz
Desiring a Better Life: Heteronormativity, Education, Migration, and Generational Negotiations among US Latinas
Jackie Peng University of Maryland–Baltimore County
Raising Mixed Kids in the “Burbs”: Mixed-Race Families Navigating Race, Identity, and Discrimination in Suburban Schools
Carla Wellborn Vanderbilt University
Exploring Black Parental Power: How Black Parents (Re)imagine Black Education Through Homeschooling
Kate Baca University of Colorado
Teacher Histories in Communities of Color
Khrysta Evans University of Wisconsin–Madison
Locating the Geographies of Black Girlhoods in Education Research
Melissa Garcia Indiana University–Bloomington
Asian and Latiné College Experiences in Panethnic Student Organizations
Erin Manalo-Pedro University of California–Los Angeles
Searching for Racial Health Equity in Schools of Public Health
Estafani Marin University of California–Irvine
Overlooked Family Members: How Siblings in the Racial Middle Support Educational Journeys
Monique Perry University of Pennsylvania
Supporting Sexuality Education Pedagogy: A Cross-Curricular Analysis in Middle School Classrooms
Raquel Rose New York University
Roses in the Educational Margins
Kailea Saplan University of Wisconsin–Madison
Setting the Scene for Equity-Centered Assessment: An Ethnographic Case Study of Assessment Culture in a School-Based, Artist-in-Residence Program
Hannah Valdiviejas University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Twice-As Phenomenon: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Links to Self-Regulated Learning
The program awards dissertation fellows a $25,000 stipend to complete their dissertation research and training. Travel awardees receive funds to attend the AERA Annual Meeting. All awardees will present their work in an invited poster session during the 2024 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, where they will meet with the Minority Dissertation Fellowship Selection Committee and other senior scholars as part of a mentoring and career development workshop.
Recent fellows have gone on to faculty, postdoctoral, and research positions at leading teaching and research institutions, including Purdue University, RAND, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Vanderbilt University, as well as at think tanks and community-based organizations. As early career scholars and researchers, they are developing new and innovative studies and publishing peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and policy reports.
AERA Council established the Minority Dissertation Fellowship Program in Education Research in 1991 to support outstanding graduate students as they develop their research and begin their careers. AERA and its leadership are committed to providing a program of capacity-building and training opportunities for scholars from racial and ethnic groups historically underrepresented in education research.
“We are excited to support these exceptional graduate students and their promising dissertation research,” said George L. Wimberly, AERA director of professional development and diversity officer. “The fellows and travel awardees are developing significant work that will undoubtedly expand knowledge across key areas of study.”
This is a highly competitive program that funds the strongest research on topics across education, school and schooling processes, and student experiences. The selection committee seeks proposals to bring grounded, insightful, and informed perspectives to the field. AERA will begin accepting the next cycle of proposals later this summer with a November 15, 2023, deadline. For further details, please email the program at fellowships@aera.net.