Allen is a 5th year EPP doctoral student(anticipated graduation date 05/2012) whose areas of research interest are developing policies that reduce the negative impact current accountability measures have on low SES and minority school populations and transforming teacher education to reflect the economic and cultural diversity of today’s student bodies. Allen’s primary goal is to train highly effective teachers and administrators whose goal it is to improve schools that serve high populations of “at-risk” students through specialized training and rigorous, continuous staff development; the idea being that they will build careers around serving these populations and schools thereby potentially transforming communities. Allen works as an Executive Master Teacher for the University of Texas Austin’s Institute for Public School Initiatives (IPSI) On TRACK program overseeing online Social studies lesson development and implementation and other related projects. Prior to his being admitted to the EPP program, Allen served as a Dropout/School completion specialist for ESC Region XIII, a secondary Social Studies and English teacher in Texas public schools & DAEPs, and has served as an academic advisor for a charter school serving the needs of returning dropouts.

Amy is a second year EPP student and graduate research assistant for UTCULP (University of Texas Collaborative Urban Leadership Project). She received her bachelors degree from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. After spending five years teaching at the elementary level in Texas and Virginia, she pursued her masters degree at the College of William and Mary in Educational Policy, Planning, and Leadership. Following completion of her masters, she worked as a gifted and talented teacher in Williamsburg, Virginia. She then moved to Washington, DC and worked as a teacher assessment specialist and assistant principal at a Spanish Immersion elementary school in the Arlington County public school system. She is currently working on her doctorate while raising three young children. Her broad research interests include issues related to school finance across all states, especially Texas; accountability measures and the translation by states of related federal legislation; principal retention; principal working conditions; and finally, the everyday information seeking behaviors of parents related to public and private schools.

Amy Williams is a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Policy and Planning. Her dissertation focuses on special populations and rational decision-making in charter schools. Mrs. Williams’ research interests include finance issues in education, school reform in charter schools, business concepts in educational contexts and minorities in education.

Mrs. Williams has a M.B.A and a B.A. in Management. She has published in peer reviewed journals including the Association of Mexican American Educators Journal (2010), the Berkley Review of Education (2011) and the Journal of Educational Administration (2012).

Angélica is a fourth year doctoral student. Currently, she is a graduate research assistant with the Texas Education Research Center (ERC) at UT Austin, working on program evaluations of regional high school-to-college pipeline organizations (P-16) related to college and workforce readiness awareness and increased Latina/o parent participation in programming. She is also a graduate research assistant with the Vice President of Student Affairs at UT Austin. She was previously a fellow at the Texas Center for Education Policy (TCEP) and a graduate research assistant at the UT Austin Public Policy Institute (PPI). Ms. Rodríguez also worked as a Legislative Assistant during the 81st Texas Legislative Session through the Senator Gregory Luna Fellow program. Her dissertation will evaluate the effects of state and institutional financial aid on the persistence and completion for undocumented students in Texas, with particular focus on students participating in community colleges.

Christian is a third year student in the Education Policy and Planning program. She is primarily interested in early childhood education, particularly state-funded universal pre-kindergarten. Christian currently works as an Evaluation Specialist at Austin Independent School District and as a Facilitator in the Curriculum and Instruction Department at UT-Austin.

In addition to her employment and course work, Christian is developing her dissertation proposal, which will center on the political processes that led to the development of universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) in the state of Oklahoma. The fact that a high-quality pre-kindergarten exists in such a conservative state is a very curious case and demands a thorough examination of the political processes. Christian seeks not only to explain the development and passage of universal pre-kindergarten in Oklahoma, but to also understand what lessons can be taken from a historical policy analysis of this issue for contemporary educational policy.

Before coming to UT, Christian taught first grade for two years in Houston, TX, as a Teach For America corps member. She received her B.A. in psychology from Spelman College and M.A. in Child and Adolescent Development from UC-Santa Barbara.

Daniel is currently a third year doctoral student in the Educational Policy and Planning Program. His research interests involve analyzing the impact of tracking policies on educational outcomes. Moreover, he would like to examine the extent to which minority students are overrepresented in low track classes and underrepresented in high track classes and the extent to which detracking policies lead to higher academic achievement and educational attainment for minority students. Additionally, he is interested in studying how housing and school zoning policies lead to segregated schools. He currently works as a graduate research assistant for Dr. Jeffrey Wayman focusing on data use and as a graduate research assistant for the Neighborhood Longhorns Program. In the summer of 2010, he was an Archer Center Fellow in the Archer Center’s Graduate Program in Public Policy where he served as an intern for the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development for the U.S. Department of Education.

Emmanuel’s research interests include the politics of education policy, legislative behavior, knowledge utilization, and accountability systems. Emmanuel was born in Brownsville, Texas and is a native of the Rio Grande Valley. Garcia holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government and Mexican-American Studies from UT and is a graduate of the first cohort of the Master of Arts program in Mexican-American Studies, also at UT. For the past several Texas state legislative sessions, Emmanuel has worked with university and community organizations to better inform state legislators during the development of education policy.

Gloria Cisneros Lenoir attended South Garland High School, Garland, Texas. She attended Austin College and received a B.A. and an M.A. She taught French and served as department chair at Lyndon Baines Johnson High school from 1973 to 1977. She then attended The University of Texas at Austin and received a MBA in Finance. She worked as a Legislative Aide at the Texas State Capitol from 1977 to 1979 and worked in the securities industry from 1979 to 1984 and 1987 to 1988. She taught Spanish for International Trade at St. Edward’s University from 1991 to 1999. She taught Computer Applications, French, Spanish, and English, and served as Languages other than English Department Chair at Travis High School from 1998 to 2008. She is currently working as a researcher at The University of Texas at Austin in the College of Education.

Jay Brown is in her third year of the Education Policy and Planning (EPP) PhD program at UT Austin. Her goals for this program are to become adept in three areas: quantitative analysis, qualitative research, and the legislative and policy contexts. Her specialties include state and federal education policy, politics of education, policy implementation, teacher development, evaluation, and accountability studies. Jay works both as a teaching assistant for a number of Data Based Decision (DBDM) classes, and as a research assistant and grant evaluator at the Texas Education Research Center (ERC). In addition to her work and studies, she is currently in the phase of developing a dissertation proposal to study the implementation of the "Texas Top-Ten Percent" law which grants automatic admission to students based on their class ranking. While most research to date focuses on the law in relation to higher education, her focus is directed to the high school setting. The study will explore how local districts and schools construct meaning, develop, and implement local policies to meet the demands of "Top Ten". In addition she will also investigate how locally formed Grade Point Average (GPA) formulas affect student outcomes in high school and higher education as part of an additional statistics portfolio program. Before coming to UT, Jay earned both her BA and MAT from Trinity University in San Antonio where she also taught middle school for five years.

You may contact Jay Brown at jessica-brown@mail.utexas.edu

I am interested in the link between policy and practice, particularly in a humanistic approach to education policy implementation as it relates to economically disadvantaged student populations. Since earning an M.S. in College Counseling from San Francisco State University in 1996, my career has focused on college access and readiness efforts, informed by earlier work in college student retention. Specific experience includes the implementation and management of the federal Workforce Investment Act and Upward Bound programs – the latter of which received recognition for innovative and promising practices from the U.S. Department of Education. Related experience includes serving as a field reader for the national GEAR UP competition as well as writing grant applications resulting in federal and private funding. I hold a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego.

Marilyn Springel is currently completing her Ph.D. in the Educational Policy and Planning program within the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Texas-Austin. Springel is focusing her dissertation research on teacher-initiated mobility in urban elementary schools. Other research interests include the preparation and evaluation of classroom teachers and school leaders as methods for establishing and monitoring effectiveness. She is also active in researching the P-16 pipeline, currently serving as the P-16 council chairperson at the University of Texas.

Springel is employed by the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) as a Graduate Research Assistant, working closely with Dr. Michelle Young, the organization’s Executive Director. She also serves as a Teaching Assistant to Dr. Young in a doctoral-level course, Critical Policy Analysis. Prior to her current employment with UCEA and the University of Texas, Springel worked as an elementary classroom teacher in Texas and, before that, a kindergarten-eighth grade reading intervention teacher, consultant and coordinator in California. Springel earned both her Masters and Bachelors degrees from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, and is a member of both the Kappa Delta Pi and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies.

After earning his bachelors degree from UT, Matt received his masters degree in Policy, Organization and Leadership Studies from Stanford University before beginning his doctoral work in education policy at UT. He currently works as a graduate research assistant in the Education Research Center of UT-Austin, a research center created by the 79th Texas Legislature. The center is directed by Dr. Pedro Reyes and combines data from the Texas Education Agency, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, State Board of Educator Certification, and Texas Workforce Commission, allowing researchers to investigate the pathways students take from the time they enter school to the time they enter the workforce. Matt is currently researching factors that influence successful student transitions from high school to postsecondary institutions. He is also interested in the frames of reference reflected in educational policy discourse at the national and international levels.

Melinda A. Lemke is a third year Educational Policy and Planning PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin. Recently named a David L. Clark Graduate Fellow and as a Women’s and Gender Studies Portfolio candidate, her research seeks to apply feminist and queer paradigms to educational ethics, policy, and politics in innovative ways. Melinda recently completed ten years of decorated secondary social studies teaching including receipt of a Teaching American History Grant, National Board Certification, and a Humanities Texas Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award. Melinda has worked as a graduate research assistant on both quantitative and qualitative research projects, presented at multiple local and national conferences, and is published by the SAGE Reference System. She has maintained her longtime work as a secondary social studies curriculum writer for Austin ISD, volunteers for the Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault at the School of Social Work, and is a founding and managing editor of the Texas Education Review, the College of Education’s first student peer-reviewed journal. Melinda also is a Teaching Assistant for Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig and is working on a Spencer Grant with him that examines the intersection between neoliberal economic policy, Texas secondary social studies standards reform, and the classed-gendered student. Melinda received her BSED in Secondary Education, BA in History, and Minor in Law cum laude from Bucknell University. As a James Madison Memorial Fellow she obtained a MEd in Curriculum and Instruction summa cum laude with a focus on federal policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

Rebecca is a doctoral student in Educational Policy and Planning at the University of Texas at Austin. Rebecca’s research interests focus on the impact of the juvenile justice system on entrants’ educational outcomes. Rebecca received her B.A. in Sociology from NYU and her Master’s in Middle Childhood Mathematics Education from Brooklyn College.

Rian is doctoral student in Education Policy and Planning. Her research interests include: school choice, social/cultural context of education, K-12 educational experiences for students of color, and the relationship between research, politics and policy. Currently, Rian is working on a project exploring school level responses to multiple choice policies in an urban district. Rian also works as a Graduate Research Assistant with the Longhorn Center for Academic Excellence in the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. For Summer 2011, Rian was selected to be an Archer Center Fellow with the Archer Center’s Graduate Program in Public Policy where she will be working as an intern for the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Education. Originally from Detroit, Michigan, Rian earned her B.S in Psychology from Central Michigan University and M.Ed in Higher Education Administration from The University of Texas at Austin. Email: rian.carkhum@gmail.com

Suyun is currently a fourth year doctoral. Suyun’s research interests include school and teacher accountability policies in K-12 in both the U.S. and Korea. Specifically, her dissertation examines how high-stakes accountability system influences teacher job satisfaction in public schools in Texas. She is working as a teaching assistant for Quantitative Research and Analysis of Dr. Victor Saenz. Before coming to UT, she was a public elementary school teacher for seven years in Korea. She received a M.Ed. in Elementary Educational Administration and a B.Ed. in Elementary Education from Seoul National University of Education.

Todd is currently a second year doctoral student in Educational Policy and Planning. His research interests focus on the relationship between policy and classroom pedagogy. Current research projects of Todd’s include an examination of principals’ goals for science instruction in their school, as well as a study looking at the academic outcomes of schools lead by alternatively certified principals. Todd received both his bachelors and masters degrees in science education from the Florida State University. Previously, Todd was a high school science teacher, teaching both in Florida and Texas.

Chris is a doctoral student in Education Policy & Planning. His research interests include school district fragmentation, intra-district school choice initiatives, and transportation issues in large, metropolitan school districts.  He holds a graduate assistant position with Pre-College Academic Readiness Programs within the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at U.T.  In addition, he has an appointment as a Student Academic Mentor with U.T. Austin Intercollegiate Athletics.  Chris was a public school teacher in Metro Atlanta where he taught twelfth-grade Advanced Placement Macroeconomics, Honors and general Economics, as well as World History for several years prior to enrolling at U.T. Austin.  He earned and his Bachelor’s in Social Science Education at Kennesaw State University and his Master’s in Education Administration and Policy at The University of Georgia.