Chen An, Ph.D. ’15 (Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation), is senior director of Research, Accountability & Grants at Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, Florida.
Michelle Sterk Barrett, M.A. ’96 (Higher Education), director of the Donelan Office of Community-Based Learning at the College of the Holy Cross, and Associate Professor Heather Rowan-Kenyon participated with other Boston College alumni and faculty in a panel discussion on the crisis facing the Catholic Church. The event took place in September at Merrimack College. Read more in BC News »
Courtney Castle, Ph.D. ’18 (Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment), is the senior assessment designer at the Woodrow Wilson Academy of Teaching and Learning in Cambridge, Mass., where she creates and oversees assessment systems that track teacher candidates’ development of competency.
Ph.D. student Matias Placencio Castro (Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment) was an Education Pioneers Fellow in summer 2018. He was placed in the Office of Data and Accountability at the Boston Public Schools working on the Opportunity Index, a composite measure designed and developed to identify and measure schools that serve the highest concentrations of students in need.
Wenjun Chi, M.Ed. ’07 (Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation), is director for Institutional Effectiveness at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, responsible for campus-wide planning, resource reallocation, accreditation, and student learning. She is enrolled in the Intelligence & Analytics M.S. Program at Saint Joseph’s Haub School of Business.
Ramon De Jesus, M.A. ’12 (Higher Education) is director of Diversity Development at the Cambridge Public Schools.
Ramon De Jesus, M.A. ’12 (Higher Education) and former Donovan Scholars Alison Mann, M.Ed. ’09 (Curriculum and Instruction); Donkor Minors, M.Ed. ’10 (Secondary Education) and M.Ed. ’15 (Moderate Special Needs); Marcus Penny, M.Ed. ’13 (Curriculum and Instruction); Sam Texeira, M.Ed. ’14 (Curriculum and Instruction); and Catherine Wong, director of Urban Outreach Initiatives, were featured on a WCVB-TV CityLine feature on diversity in Boston Public Schools. The show highlighted the program’s work to recruit, retain, and support educators of color. Read the article and view videos »
Video: Recruiting educators of color in the Boston Public Schools
Video: Hiring and retention
Video Donovan Urban Teaching Scholars program
Julia DeVoy, Ph.D. ’06 (Applied Development and Educational Psychology), was named associate dean of undergraduate students in the Lynch School. DeVoy was selected as the Global Opportunities and Threats: Oxford University awardee for research addressing complex issues of fresh water scarcity using stochastic network modeling technology in 2018.
Kevin Dua, M.Ed. ’12 (Curriculum and Instruction, Donovan Scholar), was named the 2018 Massachusetts Teachers Association / Red Sox Most Valuable Educator and was honored in a pre-game ceremony in September at Fenway Park. Dua, who was the 2017 Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year, teaches history and social studies at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and is a commissioner for the Wakefield, Mass., Human Rights Commission. Hear Kevin Dua describe his work »
Ph.D. student Gulsah Gurkan (Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment) was an Education Pioneers Summer Fellow. She worked with the Showcase Schools team at the New York City Department of Education, where she built a data model that allows customized reports to be shared with all school superintendents and borough field support centers.
Kevin Holbrook ’15 (Secondary Education), a Ph.D. candidate in Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment, and Christine Power, director of Practicum Partnerships and Professional Development, had a paper accepted for the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education Annual Meeting in Louisville, Ky, in February 2019. The title of the presentation will be “Reaffirming and elevating the soul of education preparation: A reflection on innovation, accreditation, and institutional identity.”
Alison Mann, M.Ed. ’09 (Curriculum and Instruction, Donovan Scholar), is a kindergarten and first grade teacher at Gardner Pilot Academy in Boston.
Liz McCartney ’94 (Elementary Education), co-founder and chief operating officer of the St. Bernard Project, was selected to be one of the “300 for 300” people and moments to mark New Orleans’s tricentennial. Her non-profit—the St. Bernard Project, now called SBP—has gone national, helping to restore family homes in Louisiana as well as responding to the recent hurricanes in the Carolinas and Florida, turning McCartney into an emblem of the power of volunteerism. Read more about SBP and McCartney in the Times-Picayune.
Former Donovan Scholar Donkor Minors, M.Ed. ’10 (Secondary Education) and M.Ed. ’15 (Moderate Special Needs), is the Boston Public Schools’ coordinator of Targeted Programs in the Office of Opportunity & Achievement Gaps.
Michael T. O’Connor, Ph.D. ’17 (Curriculum and Instruction), co-authored Collaborative Professionalism: When Teaching Together Means Learning for All (Corwin, 2018) with retired Professor Andy Hargreaves, where they highlighted how collaboration can be a powerful educational tool and the next step in a worldwide effort to improve education. Learn more about the book Collaborative Professionalism »
Elie Ohana, M.S. ’17 (Applied Statistics and Psychometrics), co-authored an article published in MIT Sloan Management Review on the importance of psychometrics in the fields of business and marketing. Read the article »
Marcus Penny, M.Ed. ’13 (Curriculum and Instruction, Donovan Scholar), a middle school science teacher at Boston’s Gardner Pilot Academy, is on an educational leave of absence during which he is traveling, writing grants, and exploring computational learning and access within underserved communities in the US and abroad.
Todd Reeves, Ph.D. ’14 (Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation), co-authored two articles in CBE—Life Sciences Education with Professor Larry Ludlow: “Pathways over Time: Functional Genomics Research in an Introductory Laboratory Course” and “Does Context Matter? Convergent and Divergent Findings in the Cross-Institutional Evaluation of Graduate Teaching Assistant Professional Development Programs,” both in spring 2018.
Ph.D. student Katherine Reynolds (Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment) spent two months at the Centre for Assessment Research, Policy and Practice in Education at Dublin (Ireland) City University. She worked on a literature review that sought to synthesize existing research addressing various forms of “short assessments,” and worked to replicate initial validity analyses from the US of the ETS HEIghten™ critical thinking test with an Irish sample.
Mandy Savitz-Romer, Ph.D. ’04 (Higher Education), Associate Dean Ana M. Martinez Alemán, and Associate Professor Heather Rowan-Kenyon co-authored Technology and Engagement: Making Technology Work for First Generation College Students (Rutgers University Press, 2018), in which they discussed how digital tools help ensure the academic success of students who are first in their families to go to college. View video featuring the authors » and Read an op-ed the three wrote for Inside Higher Ed »
Roland Stark, M.Ed. ’02 (Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation), presented “Applying Behavioral Economics to the Business of Higher Education” at the Analytics Without Borders conference at Bentley University and has been conducting an evaluation of technologies to improve school bus safety in the Southwest.
Sam Texeira, M.Ed. ’14 (Curriculum and Instruction, Donovan Scholar), teaches 10th to 12th grade history at the Henderson K–12 Inclusion School in Boston.
Doctoral student Kaitlyn Tuthill (Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment) was named director of Assessment and Accreditation at Boston College’s Lynch School.
Lynch School undergraduates joined their Boston College counterparts from other schools gaining valuable experience abroad this summer, courtesy of the myriad summer study opportunities available through the Office of International Programs. Read more in BC News »
More than 1,000 runners raised more than $180,000 in the 8th Annual BC Race to Educate to benefit Saint Columbkille Partnership School, the Lynch School’s designated laboratory school. Read more in BC News »
Members of the Boston College Police Department enthusiastically greeted students from the Campus School at Boston College upon their arrival for a new school year, delivering a “High Five Friday” start for the 42 enrollees. View video on BC News; learn more about Campus School »