Ph.D. in Education: Student Profiles
Doctoral students at the UCI School of Education study a wide range of issues that affect human learning and development. They are paired with leading faculty who share similar research interests and who help the doctoral student grow into a well-rounded academic.
There is not a “typical” doctoral student at the UCI School of Education. Students historically matriculate from multiple countries and states and have varied work experiences and undergraduate majors of study. Historically, half our doctoral students have a master’s degree, and half have prior teaching experience. Additionally, our students vary widely in age, and many are parents.
Our students serve as teaching assistants, graduate student researchers, mentors to undergraduates, and leaders of student initiatives across campus.
Click here for a full directory of our doctoral students. To learn more about our students' research, honors and leadership, please visit our news center.
There is not a “typical” doctoral student at the UCI School of Education. Students historically matriculate from multiple countries and states and have varied work experiences and undergraduate majors of study. Historically, half our doctoral students have a master’s degree, and half have prior teaching experience. Additionally, our students vary widely in age, and many are parents.
Our students serve as teaching assistants, graduate student researchers, mentors to undergraduates, and leaders of student initiatives across campus.
Click here for a full directory of our doctoral students. To learn more about our students' research, honors and leadership, please visit our news center.
Ph.D. in Education Student Highlights
Check back as student highlights are updated regularly!
Check back as student highlights are updated regularly!
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Fourth-year doctoral student Daniela Alvarez-Vargas developed a love for research on child development while helping raise her younger siblings, and a desire to help students thrive in math when she found herself and others being steered away from mathematical professions by systematic forces. Educational interventions helped her earn her a B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Statistics from Florida International University, which equipped her for pursuing her doctoral degree at the UCI School of Education. A line of her work focuses on identifying how causal inference methods can be used to calculate accurate forecasts of the long-term impacts of math interventions. “I want to improve current approaches to intervention design, implementation, and evaluation to ensure equitable and self-sustaining educational programs that serve historically marginalized students.”
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Third-year doctoral student Ashlee Belgrave joined the UCI School of Education to engage in community-based research. Ashlee’s motivation to pursue such research is informed by strong familial and cultural ties with her community. Through her work as a Community Research Fellow in the Orange County Educational Advancement Network (OCEAN), Ashlee has engaged in partnerships with local school districts to conduct usable and relevant research that supports students and their families. “My research interests include examining mechanisms for leveraging university resources to create educational interventions and programming that supports educational equity and culturally relevant learning.” In the future, Ashlee will continue to partner with OCEAN and the UCI Center for Educational Partnerships, where she will work alongside high school students to explore college readiness and build educational programming.
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Third-year doctoral student Socorro Cambero continued her educational journey at the UCI School of Education after graduating with a double major in Education Sciences and Gender and Sexuality Studies with a minor in Queer Studies from UCI. “As a graduate student, I’ve received extensive research support from leading scholars in teacher education and departments across UCI. Further, the research centers, such as the Center for Research on Teacher Development, provided me with opportunities to continue nurturing my research skills in the study of science teacher education.” As a community research fellow in the school’s Orange County Educational Advancement Network, Socorro is exploring how culturally responsive practices were employed during the pandemic. “I aspire to conduct research grounded in the lived experiences of marginalized students to create meaningful learning experiences in science.”
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Before enrolling at the UCI School of Education, fifth-year doctoral student Melissa Dahlin taught preschool in Taiwan for five years, earned a master’s degree in International Educational Development at Columbia University, spent six years in Washington, D.C. in policy and evaluation work, and volunteered with the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project. “The School of Education’s doctoral program is preparing me to return to the field with much stronger analytic skills and deeper content knowledge to do this work well.” For her doctoral studies, Melissa is focusing on childhood development, parenting, and early childhood policy. She complements her research work by serving as president of the Associated Doctoral Students in Education and as a mentor through the School of Education’s Diverse Educational Community and Doctoral Experience . She has served as a School of Education representative to Associate Graduate Students and a board member for the Orange County Association for the Education of Young Children.
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Fourth-year doctoral student Hye Rin Lee is enriching her study of achievement motivation as a member of four different research teams. On a project with Distinguished Professor Jacquelynne Eccles and the UCI School of Engineering, Hye Rin is researching how to leverage YouTube to increase STEM persistence and identity. Research with Associate Professor Drew Bailey is examining associations between various motivational constructs. A project with Assistant Professor of Teaching Fernando Rodriguez aims to understand students’ motivation in an online context. Lastly, research with Dean Richard Arum on the Next Generation Undergraduate Success Measurement Project team is examining the undergraduate experience at UCI. In addition to her academic pursuits, Hye Rin appreciates the “close-knit community among graduate students” at the School of Education. Hye Rin is looking forward to continuing her research interests as a professor at a research institution.
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Third-year doctoral student Joseph Montoya chose to attend the UCI School of Education because of the close relationships with the local community and school districts. Joseph’s time as a high school biology teacher, Career Technical Education (CTE) department chair, and community college instructor encouraged his enrollment in the School’s doctoral program to explore STEM education and how CTE pathways include or exclude marginalized communities. Currently, Joseph is a graduate student researcher on an National Science Foundation-funded computational thinking grant, and is also working with researchers from the Center for Integrated Facilities Engineering at Stanford University to study workforce pathways from secondary to post-secondary education. When asked about his future plans, Joseph explains, “I would like to continue to do research in service to my community.”
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Khamia Powell
Advisors: Distinguished Professor Jacquelynne Eccles, Assistant Professor Adriana Villavicencio Vertical Divider
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Before coming to the UCI School of Education, fifth-year doctoral student Khamia Powell taught at Title I schools, serving the most vulnerable and underserved communities along the outskirts of Washington D.C. and Atlanta. “I loved teaching, but I noticed that the high expectations, positive teacher-student interactions, and love that defined our classroom and learning experiences for my general education students, gifted education students, and especially my students of color was not typical for similar students of color from underserved communities right next door or down the hall.” Looking to make a greater impact, Khamia matriculated to the School of Education because of its mission of elevating and celebrating diverse communities and scholars. “I was once told that to attract people of color, there needs to be faces of color. That’s why I came here – to support our commitment to serving the most vulnerable, to be an advocate for my students and their communities, and to advance the mission and goals of UCI and the School of Education.”
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A fifth-year doctoral student, R. Mishael Sedas’s engineering background and professional experience with an international nonprofit led to his goal of improving STEM, Art and Design education to be more accessible, diverse, and inclusive for minority populations. “I am particularly interested in out-of-school learning environments, such as home, youth clubs, makerspaces, public libraries, museums, and science centers.” Mishael is now studying the interest-driven and “frugal-informal” engineering design practices of Latinx youth. He believes that higher education institutions could leverage these practices to foster and enhance “formal” engineering learning and design literacy. “Ultimately, design literacy can empower educators (including families) to become co-designers of effective educational experiences for this rapid-changing world with complex challenges ahead.”
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Prior to his studies at UCI, third-year doctoral student John Szura earned his bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Purdue University Northwest. His research centers on understanding how educators utilize educational technologies to facilitate their courses, the experiences that are shared through the use of such technology, and the academic outcomes that result. These interests have led John to work on projects that examine student course choice and performance in remote learning courses, the value in utilizing telepresence robots as instructional tools, and exploring the diverse experiences shared at after-school programs that incorporate 21st century technologies in their programming. “Outside of research, UCI has given me the chance to nurture my passion for mentorship and teaching as a participant in the many opportunities offered through DECADE (Diverse Educational Community and Doctoral Experience), the Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation, and the School of Education.”
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Third-year doctoral student Joseph Wong selected UCI School of Education for its commitment to cross-functional research in cognitive science, digital learning, and educational technology. As a learning experience designer and researcher, Joseph is motivated by questions at the intersection of science education, digital media, and higher-order thinking. Currently, Joseph is a lead researcher on Professor Lindsey Richland’s NSF RAPID grant, which evaluates the impacts of COVID-19 stressors on UCI students’ distance-learning experiences by identifying the cognitive mechanisms underlying learners’ self-efficacy and task-value beliefs, anxiety, mind-wandering, and online engagement. This foundational research will inform the efficacy of and design for undergraduate courses at UCI. “As a first-generation Burmese American student and recent 2020 NSF graduate research fellow, my career goal is to bridge together my passion for digital media technologies with human cognition to design and facilitate transformative learning experiences representative of today’s 21st century student learning behaviors.”
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Learn More about the Ph.D. in Education Program
