{firstName} {lastName} - {facTitle}
Hometown: {hometown}
Concentration: {concentration}
Educational background:{edBackground}
Why I chose Cornell: {choseCornell}
Research Goals: {researchGoals}
Career Goals: {careerGoals}
{longDesc}I became interested in how relative levels of access to pre-engineering experiences - particularly, FIRST Robotics - positions students from specific backgrounds for success or failure as novice engineers
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I chose Cornell because of the University’s historic commitment to curricular flexibility. Other programs I looked at had established and regimented programs with little latitude for individual initiative and exploration. Because I entered the PhD program with a well defined research question in mind, I wanted the freedom to pursue resources (classes, faculty, seminars) that I felt would directly inform my project. Cornell provided the flexibility that allowed me to develop my own curricular trajectory; while my committee offered guidance along the way, the responsibility for pursuing things that were of interest to me was mine. I also liked the people in the Department of Education when I initially dropped by to speak to them about my ideas – they were interested and I was convinced then, as I am now, that they would be great to work with as I moved through the project.
I’m interested in pursuing three broadly related elements in the next phase of my career.
- I would like to teach at the university level.
- I am interested in research that has both practical and pragmatic impacts. As a former administrator, I would like to conduct research that is relevant to people whose daily work involves helping children understand engineering and then succeed as engineers. In particular, I’m interested in working with groups who have traditionally struggled to gain access to engineering.
- I am interested in finding, understanding, and developing mechanisms – or programs – that provide opportunities for urban and rural children to discover and participate in engineering. This means developing effective programs that do two things:
- Focus on children in urban and rural areas, linking them to engineering in ways that inspire them and help them understand the realities of becoming an engineer.
- Unify a variety of constituencies – schools, corporations, community organizations, colleges and universities, parents, foundations – to focus on the issue of helping children participate in engineering.
B.A., Ithaca College, M.P.A., University of Albany, M.S., Cornell University. I also learned a great deal from working as an engineering admissions officer.
I’m interested in the ways that participation on a FIRST Robotics team in high schools impacts the abilities of first-year undergraduate engineering students to succeed. My project uses three theoretical frameworks to understand the ways that participation in FIRST interacts with the first year of engineering: social capital theory (does FIRST offer a complex set of information networks that convey “insider” information regarding engineering?), socialization theory (are FIRST participants “pre-socialized” for entry into the engineering culture?), and identity theory (does FIRST help students interested in engineering develop an engineering identity prior to entry into engineering?). Each of these theories provide an interesting way to understand the potential effects FIRST has on first-year engineers.
Teacher and student understanding of scientific inquiry, nature of science, and science content, and teacher training and professional development
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The broad focus of the program (LTSP) and the excellent resources offered by the university.
Improve science education by training and providing resources for pre-service and in-service teachers and conducting research on scientific inquiry, NOS, and science content.
B.S. in Geology and a minor in Spanish from Hope College and a M.S. in Geology and a M.S. in Education from Indiana University.
Determine if effective interventions through teacher professional development or web-based support can 1. Enhance teacher understanding of science concepts, nature of science (NOS), and scientific inquiry; 2. Cause a change in classroom instruction; and 3. Enhance student understanding of science concepts, NOS, and scientific inquiry
Adolescent moral development, specifically the development of the moral self in adolescence. I am also interested in the connections between religious beliefs and conceptualizations and moral development
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I chose Cornell because of the size of the department. I wanted to be involved in the community, to teach, to work closely with my advisor, and to conduct meaningful research. I have been able to do all of those things. Our community members really care about each other, and I think that the programs within the department are dynamic and diverse, which gives us all an opportunity to learn from each other.
To work in a teaching or advising capacity with adolescents (including college students). I would also like to continue in the study of relational aggression to better understand how it continues into adulthood.
A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard University in the Comparative Study of Religion and Women's Studies (2004)
I work on a multi-year research project investigating relational aggression among adolescent girls with Dr. Dawn Schrader. I am interested in studying the development of self and morality, which the girls describe during an intensive interview process. I also consider how girls use moral emotions in their descriptions of incidents of relational aggression.
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I chose Cornell because of its basic commitment to graduate student autonomy and individual interest while at the same time offering a general framework and step-by-step process for doctoral study. Further, from the day I received my award of admission to my initial visit to campus to the day I started classes, everyone I met was extremely supportive and willing to be of help. Also important was the vibrant campus
It is my professional hope to teach at the college level, educating future teachers and hopefully giving them a tool kit by which public education they can affect improvement and movement towards educational equity. I also hope to participate in education law policy dialogue through continued research in race and equity.
After completing my undergraduate study with Bachelor degrees in Philosophy and Psychology, I pursued my law degree at Syracuse University College of Law. While studying law, I was able to complete a joint degree, graduating with both a Masters in Education and Juris Doctor.
I expect my specific goals and research questions to change and grow while being influenced by the extensive coursework I will do here at Cornell. My general goal is to contribute to the current policy dialogues relating to racial segregation in our public schools.
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When I decided to be an educator, I searched for a program that was similar to my ideals and previous educational experiences. After exploring my options and talking with professors from my undergraduate college, I found Cornell to represent my ideal academic setting: An interdisciplinary education that strives to produce excellence in academics, citizenship, democracy, and professional mobility. I chose Cornell primarily based on that approach to education. And to quote the founder directly, “freedom from sectarian or political preferences is the only proper and safe way for providing an education that shall meet the wants of the future and carry out the founders idea of an Institution where any person can find instruction in any study” -Ezra Cornell. This quote is more than a century old, but it is still congruent with the mission of the faculty and staff at Cornell. In addition to the academic qualities of Cornell, Ithaca is breathtaking with its' waterfalls, gorges, vast forests, and ample hiking trails—providing a wonderful setting to enjoy nature as well as a rich social environment.
Aside from my passion for learning and educating, I have been a practicing commercial boat captain for nearly ten years and enjoy being on the water as much as I enjoy being in the classroom. I will incorporate these two interests by teaching in a sea-based marine science program. There are many programs currently educating students in this atmosphere, but very few that take a interdisciplinary or human ecological approach to education. My goal is to become an educator in such a program and provide students with quantitative methods for understanding biological interaction. In addition to this traditional educative approach, I will constantly strive to incorporate other disciplines like anthropology, sociology, and philosophy—enabling students to create a holistic view of their interactions with the both the natural and cultural environment.
B.A. in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic
During my undergraduate studies at College of the Atlantic, I focused on several fields of ecology (e.g. human, evolutionary, marine, and behavioral) and came to appreciate the interactions between organisms and their environment. At Cornell University, I will focus on not only increasing my knowledge of biological interactions, but also incorporating human ecology in education. On a elementary level, human ecology is the study of how humans interact with their environment. Environment in this context is not limited to our interactions with nature, but includes culture as well. Therefore, it is important to me to develop as an educator and apply an interdisciplinary approach to learning about ecology and culture.
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It has always been a dream of mine to attend Cornell University. I originally wanted to attend Cornell because I wanted to try and get into veterinary school, but I changed my mind after I graduated from SUNY Delhi. Once I got to Cornell I stumbled upon the education department and I have been involved with the department ever since because I found exactly what I was looking for.
I hope to get a job teaching at a high school shortly after I graduate. I do not have any preferences as to what state, but I would like to get a job where I can teach some agriculture classes and some biology classes. As I have mentioned above my strengths in reference to agriculture are in animal science and veterinary science. After teaching for a few years I would like to go back to school to either get another masters degree perhaps in special education or a doctorate in administration.
I graduated from high school in 2002 and spent 1 ½ years at Morrisville State College where I studied Liberal Arts-Biology. I then transferred to SUNY Delhi where I spent 1 ½ years and completed my Associates in Applied Science in Veterinary Science Technology. After getting my Associates degree I transferred to Cornell University and majored in Animal Science. I gradated from Cornell in the spring of 2007 with my bachelor’s degree. I am currently in my second semester of the M.A.T. program and will be completing my student teaching next semester, at which time I will be certified to teach high school biology and agriculture.
I hope to someday go back to school after I have taught for a few years. Currently I am extremely interested in special education, but I would like to further my experience before I try to go on to receive a higher degree.
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I chose the Adult and Extension Education program at Cornell University because I felt that my interest, commitment, and work in feminist pedagogies and political participation had both much to say and much to learn from the field of adult education. I came to this program to engage in intellectual dialogue and debate with members of the Cornell educational theory and research community more broadly, and more specifically with faculty whose work focuses on interrogating constructs of power in adult education such as Dr. Arthur Wilson and Latina identity politics in education such as Dr. Sofia Villenas. I also came to Cornell to assist Dr. Villenas with her current research project that examines Latino/a education, Latino/a families and educational equity.
It is my goal to prepare myself as best I can for a career in academic research that allows me to continuously negotiate possibilities for bridging research methods, theoretical frameworks, critical pedagogies and political participation in ways that make meaningful contributions to and inter-connections between the fields of Adult Education, Women and Gender Studies, and Latino Studies to name just three.
Bachelor's degree from the University of Puerto Rico, Master's Degree in Government from Texas Woman's University, and completed the M.A. requirements in Women and Gender Studies at Rutgers University.
My research looks at the complexities, limitations, and possibilities for transformation that emerge and are experienced at the intersection between discourses of gender, race, class, culture, and the State within adult and community education for Latina immigrants. I consider ways in which adult education can function as a site for personal transformation for the Latina adult learner in ways that encourage a political praxis project aimed to destabilize discourses and circuits of power through critical interrogation of hetero-patriarchal constructs of the gendered, raced, classed, colonized “other.” Two research questions I am currently exploring are: How are cultural, historical, epistemic, and ethnic differences among Latina women constructed/narrated/ signified within contemporary theories of adult learning in the U.S.? How might we imagine pedagogical methods that center experience, reflexivity, and political consciousness as key sites of knowledge production and political action for Latina women?