CCPA welcomes new faculty

Beth Clark-Gareca joins the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Educational Leadership (TLEL) as an associate professor, having spent six years as a teacher-educator working with preservice and in-service English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Her research focuses on content-based and proficiency assessment and access of multilingual learners in K-12 public school contexts.

Lightning Jay joins TLEL as an assistant professor after completing his doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He previously worked as a middle and high school teacher in Brooklyn and Minneapolis. His research and teaching focuses on supporting teachers’ development to ensure all students have opportunities to engage in rigorous student-centered learning.

Mina Lee joins the Department of Social Work from the University of Chicago as an assistant professor. Lee’s practice experience and research focuses on how discrimination that immigrants face at workplaces and in everyday life shapes their economic mobility and psychological coping.

Saumya Tripathi joins the Department of Social Work as an assistant professor with more than five years of research, teaching and practical experience. Her research interests lie in unpaid care work, family caregiving, work-life balance, economic empowerment, international social work and computational social science.

Kun Wang joins the Department of Social Work as an assistant professor. Previously she was acting director of a government agency in China serving economically disadvantaged children and young adults. Her research addresses cognitive aging, older adults’ digital technology use, older adults’ psychological wellbeing and cancer prevention.