Student Experience Research Network’s Midcareer Fellows Program supports a community of 15 fellows in collectively bridging research on the structures (i.e., practices, policies, and norms) that shape students’ experience of feeling respected as valued people and thinkers in school with current policy topics. The program is funded through grants from the Bezos Family Foundation and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and is implemented in partnership with Scholars Strategy Network and Education First. It is designed for midcareer faculty who identify as a member of one or more minoritized groups in the academy and who conduct equity-centered (e.g., liberatory or participatory, asset-based, anti-racist) empirical research on student experience.

Fellows are applying their leadership, vision, and research lens in service of constructing new narratives about federal and state policy topics that strategically target one or more policy intermediary audiences – a powerful mechanism for shifting how issues are understood and responded to within policy. Over the course of the fellowship, they will advance their knowledge about policymaking and how research is taken up in policy, provide input that influences the construction of the fellowship, network with colleagues who bridge research and policy, and develop translational and scholarly projects that target academic and policy audiences.

As part of this programming, fellows developed accessible and actionable policy briefs that draw on equity-centered research to address timely and important topics in the education sector. Several policy briefs are publicly available.

2021-2022 ADVISORS AND LEADERSHIP

SAPNA CHERYAN

University of Washington Advisor

THOMAS DEE

Stanford University Advisor

MICHAL KURLAENDER

University of California, Davis Advisor

BETHANY LITTLE

EducationCounsel Advisor

MARY MURPHY

Indiana University Advisor

NA’ILAH SUAD NASIR

The Spencer Foundation Advisor

KAREN PITTMAN

Knowledge to Power Catalysts Advisor

SHANETTE PORTER

Student Experience Research Network Fellowship Director

VIVIAN TSENG

William T. Grant Foundation Advisor

2021-2022 FELLOWS

NOLAN L. CABRERA

University of Arizona

REBECCA COVARRUBIAS

University of California, Santa Cruz

MARCELA G. CUELLAR

University of California, Davis

GINA ANN GARCIA

University of Pittsburgh

CONRA GIST

University of Houston

TEHIA STARKER GLASS

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

ELAN HOPE

Policy Research Associates

UMA M. JAYAKUMAR

University of California, Riverside

CHRISTOPHER C. JETT

Georgia State University

AUDREY LUCERO

University of Oregon

XIAOXIA NEWTON

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

LARA PEREZ-FELKNER

Florida State University

YOLANDA SEALEY-RUIZ

Columbia University

SOPHIE TRAWALTER

University of Virginia

CHEZARE A. WARREN

Vanderbilt University