Jasmine Alvarado ’22, an advanced doctoral student in the Curriculum and Instruction program in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, is among awardees in the 2020 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship competition.
Jasmine Alvarado
According to the Ford Foundation announcement, Alvarado’s selection for the prestigious award reflects the review panelists’ judgment of her “professional and scholarly competence” and the likelihood her career will be enhanced by the dissertation fellowship experience.
“We congratulate Ms. Alvarado as she entered a highly selective and competitive program and was identified as a scholar with outstanding credentials and promise for future achievement.”
The fellowship is underwritten by the Ford Foundation and administered by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The program seeks to enhance the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by boosting their ethnic and racial diversity, to maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and to grow the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students. Awardees are selected through a process of peer review by known scholars from across the country who voluntarily serve as evaluators.
“I am very honored to receive support from the Ford Foundation to continue to work with families, educators, and public officials of the Greater Boston area to cultivate initiatives that frame families from minoritized backgrounds as leaders and knowledge builders,” said Alvarado.
“The Lynch School is extremely proud of Jasmine’s selection as a recipient of the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship,” said Lynch School Associate Dean of Graduate Student Services Elizabeth Sparks. “Receiving this prestigious award is a testament to her scholarly achievements and her promise for a future professional career that will contribute to improving the lives of others.”
Her dissertation, titled “Traversing Multiple Spaces and Places: An Ethnographic Study of Families in a Two-Way Immersion Program in a Gentrifying Community,” put the experiences of diverse families in a two-way immersion program—an educational model that integrates native English speakers and native speakers of another language—at the center of a broader frame of how race and class affect families’ ways of interacting in educational spaces where gentrification is a constant influence, noted Sparks.
Alvarado expressed her gratitude to Lynch School faculty members C. Patrick Proctor, Jon Wargo, and Marilyn Cochran-Smith, and doctoral student David Jackson ’22 “for their feedback, care, and belief in my ideas and abilities as an emerging scholar. Lastly, I want to thank Professors Beth Warren of Boston University and Roberto Gonzales of Harvard, and all the women of color with whom I have experienced many moments of expansive learning, creative expression, and joy.”
Phil Gloudemans | University Communications | May 2020