Meet our dedicated team of graduate student executive committee (GSEC) members who volunteer their time and work hard to meet the needs of Division G graduate students across the country and around the world.
STUDENT REPRESENTATIVES
Allyson Pitzel | aapitzel@crismon.ua.edu
University of Alabama
Senior Graduate Student Representative
Allyson Pitzel (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Special Education program at the University of Alabama (UA) and is federally-funded on a U.S. Department of Education leadership grant, Project INSPIRE. Along with this, she is enrolled in the Qualitative Research Certificate Program at UA. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Allyson earned a Bachelor of Science in Elementary/Special Education, as well as a Master of Arts in Special Education from UA. After obtaining her masters, Allyson taught fourth grade for two years in Alabama. Given her current role as a Project INSPIRE fellow, Allyson strives to inspire researchers to focus on youth in residential/juvenile justice facilities. Her research interests include emotional/behavioral disorders, multi-tiered systems of support, adapted tiered supports (e.g., academic, behavioral), and systems change in juvenile justice settings. Allyson is interested in examining the sociocultural contexts of educational policy using a critical/multicultural lens to promote systems change.
Luimil Negrón-Pérez | lmngd5@mail.umsl.edu
University of Missouri – St. Louis
Junior Graduate Student Representative
Luimil Negrón-Pérez (she/her) is a doctoral student in education and a research assistant at the University of Missouri- St. Louis. As an education historian, she is interested in employing historical methodologies and ethnography to study the manufacture of racism and colonialism as forms of oppression in American schooling and in the relationship between schools and communities. Born to Puerto Rico’s diasporic community in Stuttgart, Germany, Ms. Negrón has spent most of her life in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Louisiana, and St. Louis, Missouri. When she is not focused on her projects or studying the consequences of urban education reform in communities for the Spencer project, Luimil can be found playing her violin.
The GSEC comprises two subcommittees: (a) Mentoring and Student Outreach (MSO) as well as (b) Social Media and Technology (SMT). You can find a brief description of each subcommittee’s goals and information about its members below.
Mentoring and Student Outreach (MSO)
Meet our wonderful MSO subcommittee members! In addition to planning the Division G Pre-conference seminar, MSO organizes different events and engagement opportunities to support graduate students such as self-care and wellness workshops as well as reading groups.
Turea M. Hutson | tmh52@drexel.edu
Drexel University
GSEC Secretary and Subcommittee Chairperson
Turea M. Hutson (she/her), MEd is a second-year student in the Drexel University PhD program on the Education Leadership and Policy track. She currently serves as the co-editor of the Emerging Voices in Education (EViE) Journal. She is a Cum Laude and Distinguished Dean’s List graduate of Arcadia University, where she received her BA in Elementary Education and her MEd in Literacy Studies and TESOL. Social justice and equity were a primary focus of Hutson’s undergraduate and graduate studies, and she spent much of her time researching ways to make schools a more equitable space for marginalized students to learn. Hutson’s interest in education policy led her to run for school board in her hometown. She served for seven years. She served as president of the board for three years. Hutson’s research interests include equity, education policy, racial trauma, intersectionality, autism spectrum disorder in diverse communities, and student identity.
Abbie Cohen | abbiecohen@g.ucla.edu
University of California – Los Angeles
Subcommittee Secretary
Abbie Cohen (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in the Urban Schooling division at UCLA’s School of Education & Information Studies. Abbie’s research interests explore the complex and interwoven relationships between philanthropy, education nonprofits, and urban schools. As a critical participatory qualitative researcher, Abbie analyzes concepts of race, democracy, and capital in educational institutions. Previously, she has worked as a teacher in Medellín, Colombia, a non-profit administrator in Denver, Colorado, and as a community partnerships director at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Throughout her differing roles, and ranging geographic locations, Abbie works to build bridges between people, organizations, and communities.
Meghan Zarnetske | meghan.zarnetske@gmail.com
University of Utah
Representative
Meghan (she/her) has been working in public school as a teacher and instructional coach for 15 years. She loves learning so she’s attended most higher ed institutions in Utah for two masters as well as a school administration license. Currently she is a third year PhD student at the University of Utah in the department of Education, Culture, and Society. Meghan is constantly agitated by systems of oppression and she strives to disrupt them through words, actions, and ways of being, though she recognizes how her own whiteness may complicate those actions. Meghan’s research centers around disrupting traditional schooling practices and critical hope in interdisciplinary environmental studies pedagogy. A former science teacher, Meghan also seeks ways to undo the settler colonial constructs inherent in teaching and learning science. She often uses scientific processes to examine and attempt to disrupt white colonial constructs in education.
Adrianna González Ybarra | agfyg@umsystem.edu University of Missouri – Columbia
Representative
Adrianna González Ybarra (she/her/ella) is a fourth-year doctoral student at the University of Missouri (MU) in the Language and Literacies for Social Transformation program. Adrianna’s educational training in Ethnic Studies, alongside her identity as a third generation Mexican America/Chicana/Latina, guide her research practices, frameworks, and worldviews, whereby she draws from her own familial and ancestral knowledge(s), memories, and stories, to guide her work. Her research interests include working with and alongside Black, Indigenous, Students of Color and pre-service teachers of Color to illuminate their schooling experiences. Theoretically, she draws upon critical race theories and Women of Color feminisms, and methodologically, she utilizes decolonial methodologies and testimonio to story their lived experiences, meaning making processes, intergenerational cultural memories, knowledges, and literacies. ORCID # 0000-0002-9207-8969.
Amira Nash | amira-nash@uiowa.edu
University of Iowa
Representative
Amira Nash (she/her) is the Associate Director of Partnerships and Programs in the Baker Teacher Leader Center at the University of Iowa College of Education. In this role, Amira is partnering with local school districts to create student-to-teacher pathway programs with the goal of diversifying Iowa’s teacher workforce. Additionally, Amira supports antiracism efforts and global education in the College. Prior to this role, Amira taught English Language Learners (ELL) and Social Studies at Iowa City West High School for four years. She earned both her BA in Psychology and MA in Teaching, Leadership and Cultural Competency from the University of Iowa. Amira is currently a third year doctoral student at the University of Iowa pursuing a PhD in Teaching and Learning in the Literacy, Culture, and Language Education program. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, educational policy, and education equity related to Black English and Black students identified as ELLs.
Kenesma D. John | k.john@ufl.edu University of Florida
Representative
Kenesma D. John (she/her) is a third year Ph.D. student at the University of Florida, where she is pursuing a degree in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration on Teachers, Schools and Society, while also pursuing a minor in women’s studies. Kenesma’s identity as a second generation Caribbean American guides her research agenda which is centered around Black Immigrants, Black Feminist Thought/Black Girlhood Studies, and Culturally Responsive Teaching/Learning. Kenesma John earned an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of St. Thomas and she is an experienced teacher with a demonstrated history of working in the primary education industry. In her spare time, she enjoys writing blog pieces for online magazines and uses her life experiences as a basis for the books she writes.
Jenna Gabriel | gabrielj@vcu.edu. Virgina Commonwealth University
Representative
Jenna Gabriel (she/her) is a doctoral student at Virginia Commonwealth University, where her research focuses on how disabled students develop a political identity and the role of the arts in disrupting school-based cycles of harm. She is particularly interested in the forces that shape disabled students’ experiences in schools and is currently conducting research at the Library of Virginia that applies a disability critical race theory lens to explore how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s least restrictive environment tenet sustains the conditions for race-based segregation in a post-Brown, post-Massive Resistance Virginia. Jenna is an adjunct instructor at VCU and at University of North Carolina, Wilmington, where she teaches undergraduate and masters coursework related to sociopolitical struggles in education, as well as practicum coursework on supporting students with disabilities in art education. She holds a BFA in Drama from New York University and an EdM from Harvard University.
Hannah Edber | hmedber@gmail.com Mercer University Representative
Hannah Edber (she/her) has taught for over 10 years in middle schools, high schools, and in college classrooms at UC Santa Cruz and at San Quentin State Prison. Originally from Northern California, Hannah now lives and works in Atlanta, where she is a PhD student in Curriculum & Instruction at Mercer University and a research assistant at the Linguistic Justice Collaborative, funded by a Spencer Foundation grant. Her first publication, “Burning Fires: Destruction and Creation in a Multicultural Literature Classroom,” is forthcoming from the National Council for the Teaching of English (NCTE) book Racial Literacies Informed by the Sociopolitical and Sociocultural Contexts for Youth, Vol. 2. Her research interests include discipline and carceral connections in schools, critical race English education, critical curriculum studies, linguistic justice, affect, and poetry/politics.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY SUBCOMMITTEE
Meet our brilliant SMT team! This subcommittee connects Division G graduate students using a variety of social media platforms and provides them with technical assistance during GSEC-planned events and other virtual networking engagements.
Tairan Qiu | tqiu19@uga.edu
The University of Georgia
Subcommittee Chairperson
Tairan Qiu (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in the Language and Literacy Education Department at the University of Georgia. As a transnational migrant and a native to Yunnan, China, Tairan navigates her life, identities, and literacies across national borders and across time. As such, her research agenda is oriented around exploring the myriad literacy practices of transnational youths and centering their stories and experiences, for the purpose of advocating for more opportunities in their schools, communities, and homes to sustain their entire cultural, linguistic, and literacies repertoires. Her scholarship has appeared in Written Communication, Journal of Language and Literacy Education, and The Qualitative Report. In her free time, she likes swimming, hiking, and spending time with her husband and dog.
Kyungjin Hwang | khwang@email.sc.edu
University of South Carolina
Subcommittee Secretary
Kyungjin Hwang (she/her/hers) is a PhD candidate in Language and Literacy at the University of South Carolina. Kyungjin is a former English teacher at middle and high schools in South Korea, and currently teaches Korean language to Korean immigrant children at a community-based Korean language school in the U.S. She particularly makes an effort to devise and implement methods to allow Korean heritage bilingual children to use their semiotic and linguistic resources for their creative and critical meaning-making. She also works as an executive assistant at the Bilingualism Matters Center @ UofSC, which supports research and events to promote awareness about bilingualism. Her primary research interests include Heritage Language Maintenance, Dynamic Bilingualism, Multimodal Translanguaging Pedagogy, Language Ideology, and English as a Second or Foreign Language. She can be reached at khwang@email.sc.edu.
Jana L. Pickart | jpickart@umass.edu
University of Massachusetts – Amherst
Representative
Jana L. Pickart (she/her) is a poet & peacebuilder, a radical educator, a disability culture maker, and a Ph.D. student in Language, Literacy & Culture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she manages the peer review process for Equity & Excellence in Education. Jana has twice been awarded fellowships from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she earned her Masters in Arts Politics, to create and exhibit original artworks. Her doctoral research at UMass is focused on investigating how the state-funded, adult ed ESOL classroom enacts a site where artmaking as a community practice can provide liberatory dreaming space for students to express their multilingual identities beyond the White gaze. Her dream is to found a tuition-free community English school for adult immigrants that creates access and inclusion for those of us with sensory, cognitive, embodied, and felt differences as a necessary component of antiracist organizing.
Ben Ray | baray1@crimson.ua.edu
University of Alabama
Representative
Ben Ray (he/they) is a doctoral student in Instructional Leadership, Social and Cultural Studies, at the University of Alabama. He obtained his master’s degree in women’s studies (2018) before joining the SCS program in 2020. He has taught courses in women’s studies at the undergraduate level both as a graduate teaching assistant and as an adjunct faculty member. His advisor is Dr. John Petrovic, and he is Dr. Petrovic’s research assistant. Their work together includes managing special issues of Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education, as well as Thresholds in Education. Ben additionally assists Dr. Petrovic as a teaching assistant for a current doctoral level course on Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy. Ben’s research interests are varied, but he finds himself most drawn to current nexuses of philosophy and educational research methodologies. Ben loves walking and biking, spending time with his dog, Coco, and talking…a lot.
Caroline Chubb | cchubb1@student.gsu.edu
Georgia State University
Representative
Caroline Chubb (she/her) is a first year PhD student at Georgia State University, where she is pursuing a degree in Educational Policy Studies with a concentration in Research, Methodologies, and Statistics. Caroline is a first-generation immigrant from Brazil, and has previous experience in several functional areas of higher education, including advising, teaching, and student programming. Most recently, Caroline worked as an instructional technologist supporting faculty in Criminal Justice, Social Work, and Public Administration. Caroline has earned a BA in Political Science and a Master of Public Administration from the University of Central Florida. She also has a Master of Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Her research interests include program assessment and development in higher education, especially programs serving marginalized populations who have had, historically, challenges in accessing higher education or have not been retained at similar rates.
Jordana Simmons | simmonsje@rowan.edu
Rowan University
Representative
Jordana Simmons (she/her) is a second year PhD student at Rowan University and is enrolled in the Urban and Diverse Learning Environments concentration of the Access Success and Equity program. Jordana works with the Partnership for Equity, Education, and Research (PEER) which partners with K-12 public school districts in southern New Jersey and leads them in equity centered professional development. In addition to her work with PEER, Jordana works as a Student Success Coach and Equity Coordinator in the Black Horse Pike Regional School District. Prior to beginning her PhD journey, Jordana was a high school English teacher which has contributed to her research interests. She often draws from Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, and Transformative Learning Theory as she works towards developing and delivering transformative professional development to educators as well as exploring the educational experiences of students of color.
Joyce Koo | joyceck@umd.edu
University of Maryland – College Park
Representative
Joyce Koo (she/her) has taught, tutored, and coached students in a public elementary school in Baltimore and in college classrooms at the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland. Born in New York City, Joyce is now an entering first-year doctoral student in the Educational Policy and Leadership Ph.D. program in the Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership department at the University of Maryland. Prior to this, she earned a B.A. in English Literature and Cultural Anthropology, Master of Public Policy, and J.D. from the University of Michigan, followed by a Master of Arts in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University, as well as a B.S. in Biological Sciences, M.P.S. in Industrial Organizational Psychology, and Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management and Leadership from the University of Maryland. Joyce has worked in higher education for over six years. Her research interests include sociocultural contexts of educational reform, transitional periods for students between secondary and through higher education, policies impacting curriculum content and delivery, and interventions focused on underserved and at-risk populations, including low-income students who face racial inequalities.
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