College of Education Fall 2021 Newsletter | UMass Amherst

Education for a socially just world Fall 2021 news

Table of Contents 7 Connecting on a Deeper Level Scott Greenspan ’20PhD is making inroads in Greater Boston schools as a school psychologist committed to social justice.

13 Putting Identity Into Focus Ashley Carpenter ’19PhD is pushing the envelope in her latest study of Black identity in the U.S., going beyond Critical Race Theory to understand how Black youth are navigating multiple pandemics simultaneously.

16 Kinetic Social Justice Paige Pannozzo, a doctoral candidate in School Psychology, is combining yoga and educational psychology to better support students’ mental health.

20 Honoring a Daugher’s Life Donald Davis ’74 has endowed a scholarship to honor his late daughter, Colleen Davis.

26 Recap: Launch of the Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research Jamila Lyiscott, assistant professor of social justice education, and Keisha Green, associate professor of teacher education and school improvement, created the CRJ to center Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in the work of racial and educational justice.

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Dean’s note Faculty news Make a gift to the College of Education UMass Amherst College of Education Fall 2021 Newsletter Editor Wes DeShano Contributors Jon Crispin, photography Megan Zinn, writing UMass Amherst Office of News and Media Relations, writing

Getting Back to the Classroom

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fter a year of remote teaching, online learning, Zoom classes, virtual celebrations, and digital community building, the doors of Furcolo Hall were opened in August 2021 to invite students back into the classroom.

While the entire UMass Amherst community continues to adjust to the new realities of living amidst a global pandemic, there is much to be thankful for and look forward to, especially in the College of Education.

In this issue of our fall newsletter you will encounter stories of resilience and innovation. You will read about passion projects and new forays into research. Our students, alumni, faculty, and donors all continue to demonstrate unique commitments to fostering education for a socially just world. While the nation and world continue to experience the traumas of racial violence, economic turmoil, and political polarization, our community remains stalwart in its commitment to making education, and life, more equitable and just.

I invite you to visit our college website throughout the year to keep your finger on the pulse of our dynamic community. On behalf of everyone at the College of Education, I wish you well as we head into a new year. 2022 is sure to be our time to shine as educators.

Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin Dean

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Jennifer Randall, associate professor, works with students on statistical analysis.

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Connecting on a Deeper Level Alumnus Scott Greenspan ’20PhD is a catalyst for positive behavioral interventions in schools throughout Greater Boston.

By Wes DeShano

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Long before Scott Greenspan began working as a school psychologist, he felt drawn to helping others, especially kids. His summers were filled with teaching swimming lessons and volunteering as a camp counselor in Sharon, Massachusetts. He also worked in several after school programs, the highlight of which was guiding young people as they developed essential life skills.

and empathy culminated in a moment of personal clarity. He opened up to his families and friends about his identity as a gay man.

“I really connected with myself on a much deeper level,” he said. “It’s kind of funny that the very concepts I was learning in the counseling program were exactly what I needed from myself and others.”

Enter UMass Amherst. After working as a mental health clinician, Scott was craving something more. He wanted to go beyond his influence as an individual practitioner of mental health, and bring all of his skills and interests together in order to create change on a broader level.

When Scott enrolled at UMass Boston as an undergraduate, the stage was already set, even if he didn’t fully realize it yet. What he did know was that the liberal arts classes he was taking struck a chord somewhere deep inside himself.

“I felt really alive and fulfilled in those classes,” he said. “They felt like supportive environments where I could engage in rich dialogue about theory, life, and big ideas.”

Five years of nonstop work paid off (although, as he fondly remembers, “laughs around Furcolo filled my bucket and kept me going toward my goals”). Today, Scott is an assessment specialist and school consultant at Wediko Boston, which is a program of The Home for Little Wanderers. Wediko contracts with schools throughout Greater Boston to provide educational, social, and psychological support services.

Psychology was the perfect conduit for Scott to channel his innate curiosity while also putting his passion for mentorship into action. He decided to continue studying at the graduate level, enrolling in the Mental Health Counseling master’s program at his alma mater.

When he wasn’t busy taking classes or working on research, he was out in the communities of greater Boston, providing mental health support to children, adults, and families.

Scott’s position provides plenty of latitude when it comes to putting his degree to use. He splits his time meeting with school stakeholders, consulting schools about psychological testing and assessment, meeting with students as part of the special education determination process, and delivering presentations on evidence-based mental health and behavioral interventions.

Spending so much time learning the theory and practice of psychotherapy triggered a major sea change in Scott’s life. He began seeing himself no longer as a student, but as a professional.

Reflecting on abstract concepts like authenticity

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What keeps Scott grounded among all of his responsibilities is Wediko Boston's strong promotion of social justice.

“They uphold a strengths-based, antioppressive, and affirming approach to care,” Scott said. “I feel that I can bring my whole self to work and live out my values.”

Scott credits his training in the College of Education with linking his personal values to educational strategies. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, or PBIS, is a methodology he learned and gained expertise with at UMass Amherst. (PBIS factors heavily into his current work.) The College of Education also afforded him the opportunity to fine-tune his research skills, opening other social justice avenues to mental health promotion, LGBTQ+ support, and physical activity.

be a fully-fledged academic, on top of all of his professional commitments. He teaches in the School Psychology program at Tufts University, focusing on cognitive behavioral interventions in schools. He also was invited to teach as a visiting assistant professor in the Counseling Psychology program at Framingham State University in summer 2021.

If that weren’t enough, he also stays in contact with colleagues he met at UMass Amherst, working on manuscripts that address topics including physical activity promotion and mental health outcomes of transgender and gender diverse autistic youth.

“I feel so well-equipped to support youth, families, and school communities,” Scott said. “When I walk around the hallways in a school, it’s really exciting to see strategies I have advocated for actually being implemented.”

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“I felt like my thoughts and perspectives were always heard and valued,” he said. “The EDUC faculty supported me in really grounding my interests within existing school psychology frameworks."

It’s no irony, then, that Scott also finds time to

“What I really like about the School Psychology program is its emphasis on how we can be agents of change within the school system to support students socially, emotionally, academically, and behaviorally.”

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Putting Identity into Focus Ashley Carpenter ’19PhD is going beyond Critical Race Theory to understand how Black youth are navigating multiple pandemics simultaneously.

By Wes DeShano

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Chicago suburb native Ashley Carpenter is an expert when it comes to college transitions.

State University in North Carolina, Ashley is carrying out the work of the new academic vanguard, blending research, teaching, and advocacy to not only expose educational inequities, but to suggest ways that new futures can be created.

As a higher education scholar, she engages directly with the multifaceted cultural landscapes that impact students of Color and their academic journeys. Her work is enmeshed in the “here and now” of daily life as it is experienced by Black youth, especially those who grew up in low-income urban environments.

Like many academics, Ashley’s intellectual pursuits stem from deeply held personal values. At UMass Amherst and MIT, she worked as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) administrator, guiding at-risk students through the process of acclimating to college and tapping into the various support networks available to first generation learners.

“I was surrounded by love and compassion,” she says of her time at UMass, especially the two years she worked with the Upward Bound program for first-gen students from Springfield.

“It’s not only important to get students to college, but to provide genuine, tangible resources while they’re there.”

Now, as an assistant professor at Appalachian

“I’m looking at what it means to be Black identified in 2021,” she said. At ASU, Ashley is in the final stages of wrapping up a nationwide interdisciplinary study of Black identity, COVID-19, and police brutality on college campuses. The study is a true partnership, and, in a sense, a continuation of Ashley’s time in the College of Education. Her co-investigator is Chrystal George Mwangi, a former UMass Amherst education professor and Ashley’s dissertation chair.

“We used a double consciousness lens, looking at how Black students envision themselves, and how their Blackness is viewed," Ashley said.

The study is particularly timely, as it considers questions of Black students’ physical and mental health in an era of remote learning, virtual conversation, and digitally filtered social interactions.

Self-awareness is key to this type of research

"We’re utilizing a Black Critical Theory framework... because Critical Race Theory cannot fully encompass the counterstories of Black experiences, nor does it have the appropriate language to capture how antiblackness constructs law, policy, and everyday life of Black experiences.”

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based in social justice. Appalachian State has afforded Ashley the opportunity to not only think about questions of identity in her work, but to also reflect on—and appreciate—her own positionality and relationship to her students.

ASU represents a major departure from the urban, youth-focused work she has done in the past, primarily because she interacts with an entirely different demographic now.

The College of Education plays a pivotal role in grounding her experience, Ashley said.

Memories of early morning writing sessions in Montague House—and daily conversations with her dissertation committee members (“they’re the mothers of my academic village,” she says)— all contributed to the humanizing, identityfocused work she has grown to love.

“I would not be the scholar I am without the immaculate support I had at UMass,” she said. “I had a phenomenal experience.”

“I teach master’s and doctoral students, who work in various school systems,” she said. “And, they’re rural. Some of the experiences they have, and that I have, are starkly different.

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"One of the best things I can say is that I really enjoy learning from them,” she added. “One of the most rewarding things is how conversational, dialogue focused, and learning centered my classrooms have become, just as spaces where knowledge is continued, back and forth.”

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Kinetic Social Justice Paige Pannozzo, a doctoral candidate in School Psychology, is applying her interest in yoga to reimagine mental health support services for students.

By Wes DeShano

Illinois native Paige Pannozzo is just as familiar with vinyasa yoga as she is with educational psychology. As a registered yoga teacher, she helps people find their equilibrium through guided breathing techniques and purposeful movement. While these exercises have clear benefits in the studio, they also have powerful effects in school settings, too.

For Paige, yoga is an entry point, a type of kinetic social justice. By broadening the scope of resources available to students—and looking beyond just the socioemotional—educators can foster more inclusive learning spaces. Students, in turn, have more options for achieving mindfulness and a positive self-image.

“I think it’s really important to do it yourself, too,” said Paige, who typically spends 45 minutes every day in the “flow” of vinyasa yoga.

“When I’m stressed, I take a 30 minute break to move and breathe. Even if yoga isn’t the main focus of an activity, it’s something I can address with students.”

“There’s a big focus on socioemotional resources for children,” says Paige, who is completing her PhD in School Psychology.

“But, research shows that taking a break to move and breathe gives you a clearer mind, makes you more creative, and supports studying.”

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“There’s a really cool bridge between psychology and education. With a doctorate I can help kids tap into their mental health, while also working with policymakers and school districts for systemic change.”

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Redefining the type of work a school psychologist can do is one of the ways Paige advocates for students and their families.

The overlap between yoga, inner tranquility, discipline, and mental health offers the ideal platform for engaging with students—of all ages—in conversations about their wellbeing.

Building this type of environment in schools can eliminate bias and stereotypes about mental health, Paige said.

policymakers and school boards to create systemic change.

The College of Education at UMass Amherst offered her the type of support she was looking for in a program.

“It’s very collaborative,” Paige said, noting that the faculty support at UMass was a major influence on her decision. The cohort model factored in heavily, too, she said, because students can rely on their colleagues but also look to other cohorts to answer questions about classes, forming a committee, and completing a dissertation.

“People often perceive talking about mental health as a weakness,” she said. “But without talking about it, you don’t create any awareness.

I think this really influenced me to be an advocate for mental health.”

“I chose UMass for many reasons,” Paige said. “In my classes, there are so many people coming from different backgrounds, with different perspectives, that it’s very educational.

It helps me as a future school psychologist.”

That commitment to advocating for real change revolving around mental health is what motivated Paige to pursue a Ph.D. Earning a doctorate offered her the most flexibility for supporting students, she said, because it enables her to gain expertise in psychology while also acquiring the credentials to work directly with

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Hip Hop: Dynamic Mindfulness and Healing Literacies Adjusting to college life is no walk in the park. First-Year Seminars aim to help incoming students find their footing at UMass Amherst by emphasizing three goals: Enhancing Engagement, Building Connections, and promoting Self-Guided Learning. K.C. Nat Turner, professor of language, literacy, and culture, draws on his expertise in dynamic mindfulness to equip students with physical behaviors and practices that can help them stay grounded.

“We look at using hip hop and dynamic mindfulness as a set of embodied anti-racist pedagogical practices for ourselves, our schools and our communities,” said Turner. “I attempt to have students cultivate an embodied practice for themselves aimed at healing intergenerational trauma, especially racialized trauma, by using multiple ways of knowing than simply our rational mind so that they are then able to share these practices outwardly on campus and back in their home communities.”

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Honoring a Daughter’s Life Donald Davis ’74 created the Colleen M. Davis Scholarship Fund to commemorate his late daughter’s life and provide financial support to students in need.

JON CRISPIN

By Megan Zinn

Colleen Davis didn’t attend the UMass College of Education, but thanks to the Colleen M. Davis Scholarship Fund, she will have a longlasting impact on our students.

ambitions, Davis is honoring her memory by giving other students that solid start.

A teacher and scholar, Colleen had great faith in education. “She just believed that everyone needs a good start,” says her father, Donald Davis ’74. After her death in 2020, Davis created the scholarship for in-state undergraduates in need of financial support. Since illness prevented Colleen from pursuing her scholarly 20

Davis himself started at UMass while stationed at Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts, after returning from Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war. Thanks to a state program that waived tuition for returning veterans and the G.I. Bill, Davis went on to complete his degree at the university, majoring in human development in the College of Education.

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After graduating, Davis completed a master’s of social work at Virginia Commonwealth University and spent his career in a variety of medical settings. After several years at the VA Medical Center in Manchester, New Hampshire he moved to the VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, where he worked in internal medicine and neurosurgery, before serving as the social worker for the hospital’s new Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center as well as a senior fellow in Duke University’s Center on Aging. Davis eventually moved to the Daytona Beach VA outpatient clinic to be closer to family in Florida. As part of this position, Davis led the clinic’s smoking cessation program. When he decided to take early retirement, he expanded his work with smoking cessation, eventually leading programs for a large Florida HMO. Davis has been fully retired since March 2021.

He now spends his time hiking, fly fishing, and enjoying the outdoors, often in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where his partner Carol owns a home.

Davis describes his daughter Colleen as a bright, gifted child with a passion for learning. After earning a bachelor’s and masters in linguistics from Cal State Fullerton, she was accepted into Brown University’s doctoral program in Neuroscience and Linguistics with a five-year National Science Foundation fellowship. During her second semester, Colleen began to show signs of chronic illness and she was diagnosed with a very severe type of Ehlers-Danlos

Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. She was not able to continue the doctoral program or maintain a career, and returned to Florida.

“At first she was a little bit depressed,” Davis recalls. “Then she said, ‘I didn’t lose any brain cells. Not everyone in America gets a fully funded doctoral program at an Ivy League university.’ It was like her to view it that way, to focus on her success rather than on the negatives of the illness.”

Colleen died in August of 2020, just before her 40th birthday, and during the height of the COVID pandemic, which made her last months particularly difficult. Davis had put aside much of his savings for Colleen’s care, assuming he would predecease her. Instead, these funds have formed the foundation of the UMass scholarship. Davis has also made a planned gift through his estate, with 70% of his assets earmarked to fund the scholarship in perpetuity.

“I went to UMass for nothing, tuition-wise— now it’s time to give back. Whatever I give is going to be woefully inadequate, because a public education is really invaluable.”

Creating the fund has also given Davis some comfort after losing Colleen, and he’s looking forward to meeting recipients when the scholarship becomes available. “It’s having an impact in her name that will live on,” he observes. “It’s going to live on long after I’m gone as well.”

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"It was like her to view it that way, to focus on her success rather than on the negatives of the illness."

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Faculty News

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A. Sally Campbell Galman, professor of children, families, and schools, published two journal articles that explore gender diversity in school settings and the complexities of raising transgender and/or nonbinary youth. Galman takes novel approaches to these topics, including graphic ethnography and a comics-based qualitative method.

C. Marialuisa Di Stefano, assistant professor of language, literacy, and culture, continued work with the Western Massachusetts Bilingual Hub, a DESE-funded collaboration with Springfield, Holyoke, and Amherst public schools. Watch the video.

B. Mary Lynn Boscardin, professor of special education, was honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for her exceptional contributions to the field of special education and continued advocacy for developing inclusive policies and teaching practices.

D. John Hintze, professor of school psychology, and Boscardin received a $1.25 million grant from U.S. Department of Education to prepare leaders and administrators of special education at the Ph.D. level to better support students with disabilities. Read more.

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E. Robert Maloy, senior lecturer II, and Torrey Trust, associate professor of math, science, and learning technologies, published an open access eBook that became one of only 13 resources included in the 2021 curricular materials guide published by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

F. Sonia Nieto, professor emerita, received the Governor’s Award in the Humanities in recognition of her lifetime dedication to public, bilingual, and multicultural education reform. Watch the video.

G. Trust was co-author of an article on “emergency remote teaching” that became the mostviewed publication of all time on EDUCAUSE Review.

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H. Sangeeta Kamat, professor of international education, was named the Grace Lee Boggs Faculty Fellow of the Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research.

I. Stephen Sireci, distinguished university professor, received a four-year, $3.8 million grant from The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) for research on adult numeracy and digital literacy. The study, which is part of the Building Adult Skills and Attainment Through Technology Research Network, aims to develop and pilot a numeracy course and professional development program for adult learners.

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Faculty News

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A. Enrique Suárez, assistant professor of math, science, and learning technologies, co-authored a first-of-its-kind report with National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medication (NASEM). Science and Engineering in Preschool through Elementary Grades: The Brilliance of Children and the Strengths of Educators makes the case that engaging learners in science and engineering at an early age helps prepare them for important decision-making later in life.

C. Justin Coles, assistant professor of social justice, is a recipient of the 2021 William T. Grant Foundation fellowship. His forthcoming book chapter will be published in an edited volume titled Lose None of the Jewels of Our Soul: Blackness and the Fullness of Existence.

D. Warren Blumenfeld, lecturer, published Gods, guns, and hypermasculinity: Commentaries on the culture of firearms in the United States (Peter Lang Publishers), a new monograph analyzing gun violence from a progressive political perspective.

B. Theresa Austin, professor of language, literacy, and culture, was selected to join a cross disciplinary research group in the European Union to expand applied linguistics work. Along with 57 other researchers, Austin will explore the ethical dimensions of emerging technologies and their impact on literacy, language, and linguistics.

E. Former dean Dwight W. Allen (1968-1975) passed away on October 16, 2021, at the age of 90. Watch the recording of his memorial service.

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F. Professor Florence Sullivan, associate professors Darrell Earnest and Jennifer Randall, and senior teaching faculty Neena Thota, of the Robert and Donna Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, received a three-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Their project aims to create a culturally sustaining assessment tool that will be used to evaluate elementary students’ computational thinking. This study supports the overarching goal of making computer science education more accessible and inclusive. Read more.

G. Sarah Fefer, associate professor of school psychology, received a $50,000 grant from Health New England to develop and implement a family education program in Springfield and Holyoke schools. Fefer and her team adapted the rollout of this program during the pandemic, delivering online workshops to caregivers.

H. David R. Evans, professor emeritus, published a chapter in Comparative and International Education: Leading Perspectives from the Field (Palgrave Macmillan). He examines the history of the Center for International Education at UMass Amherst to understand the unusual context under which it was created and analyze its commitment to the link between academic work and managing funded development education projects.

I. Sade Bonilla, assistant professor of higher education, published an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Her research suggests that 9th grade ethnic studies courses have a transformational impact on student achievement and outcomes, including high school graduation rates and college enrollment. Watch the video.

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Launch: Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research The college’s newest research center is sparking transformative scholarship and community engagement on campus and abroad.

By UMass Amherst Office of News and Media Relations

The UMass Amherst College of Education has launched the Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research (CRJ).

addition, the initiative partnered with local schools and communities around youth participatory action research and professional development, and sponsored the Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies and Teaching for Black Lives workshop series for educators, which culminated in an interactive keynote event featuring Dyan Watson and Wayne Au, two editors of the book, Teaching for Black Lives.

Placing Black and Brown youth at the center of racial and educational justice across all disciplines in education, CRJ was founded originally as an initiative by assistant professor of social justice education Jamila Lyiscott and associate professor of teacher education and school improvement Keisha Green in 2019. Assistant professor Justin Coles was brought on as CRJ leadership in 2021, acting as the center's director of arts, culture, and political engagements.

Today, the center brings together faculty, youth, educators and community partners around the burgeoning racial healing collective, global justice programming in Ghana and serves as the home of the highly regarded Equity & Excellence in Education journal.

During the period of the initiative, Lyiscott and Green received a FulbrightHays Group Projects Abroad grant to provide a study abroad experience in Ghana for 12 Black female educators from both local school districts and districts throughout the nation. In

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“The Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research reflects our mission as a college and university and we are so proud to announce its official launch," said Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin, dean of the College of Education. "CRJ engages in important work to support racial justice in schools and communities, work which is vital to our success as a democratic society," With its new status as a center housed at the College of Education, CRJ will continue research and social action that contribute to intersectional liberation and tangible change across five areas of interlocking influence: racial equity, youth leadership, critical teacher education, fugitivity, and community engagement. CRJ is designed as a sacred space for Black, Indigenous, and People

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of Color (BIPOC), and offers professional development, programs, scholarship, media, events and models for systemic change in education.

innovation, and social justice while preparing leaders who will improve education through their professional practice and research both locally and globally.

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“Building a center in this America is essential.

Racial justice is disrupting business as usual in order to amplify the voices, ways of being, and full humanity of BIPOC throughout our institutions, communities and the world,” says Green. “In a climate of anti-Blackness and racial violence, this kind of research agenda is especially critical now, as the academy needs to do more to address systemic, institutional, and interpersonal racism to better students' lives in and out of schools.”

“It’s time to abolish our educational systems as we know it and fight toward an education rooted in anti-racism and liberation for all!” adds Lyiscott.

“To acknowledge injustice is hard work...but it’s also really beautiful and liberating work. We are very interested in offering a space for folks to do this work in ways that feel good, and humanizing, and so they don’t leave feeling depleted, but rather they leave

The UMass Amherst College of Education values diversity, community engagement, collaborative

Jamila Lyiscott

Keisha Green

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feeling full.” — Justin Coles

Justin Coles

Your Support Matters When you invest in the UMass Amherst College of Education, you support imaginative educators with a passion for social justice. By easing students’ financial burden, you enable them to advance education in Massachusetts, develop innovative education models, and serve communities across the nation and world.

Visit umass.edu/education/giving to make a gift today.