I applied to the Pathways Fellows Program because I want to help Sacramento State with assisting their neurodivergent student population in the transition from college to employment. I believe this Program can help me onto the right path to make this want a reality.

I hope to learn more research skills through learning how to work collaboratively in research-settings. I also hope to gain field experience, something I have not yet done in my education journey.

I understand that failure is not the end of the research process and is instead to be looked at as a way of improvement. I am always looking for ways to improve myself and accept constructive criticism and alternative points of view.

I applied to the Pathways Fellows Program to collaborate with professionals to immerse myself in a research-oriented environment, develop professionally, and make significant contributions to the field of Education. As a first-generation Latina, it is important to me to study inequities underrepresented students face to implement change for a more equitable education for all. With mentorship into a doctoral program, I plan to use the knowledge gained to further study these complexities and identify possible future career paths.

As a fellow, I hope to enhance my research skills through hands-on experience to produce high-quality work in the Pathways Fellows Program and my master program. Through personalized support, I hope to develop essential skills, cultivate confidence and reach my full potential to leave a long-lasting impact in my academic field.

My research skills include data collection and data analysis within quantitative and qualitative research. While currently enrolled in an Education Research class for my master program, I hope to continue to learn a diverse range of research skills, strengths and ethical standards and guidelines to contribute to knowledge advancement.

I applied for this fellowship because my goal for this next year is to gain more experience surrounding my major and this opportunity would allow me to follow a pathway that I feel passionate about. I have been interested in the research field ever since watching my brother participate in biomedical studies and taking my FACS 100 Research Methods and Applications course helped solidify my enthusiasm for it. I always admire the fact that we can truly study anything, and this fellowship would help provide great guidance from new connections and experiences as I work towards my goal to attend graduate school.

I am hoping to gain more experience in different data collection methods while also familiarizing myself with new software programs such as Excel. With that, I hope to gain more collaborative opportunities so that I can continue to actively practice my communication skills within group settings and to help myself build a professional network. Lastly, gaining extra guidance from a mentor and peers would better prepare me for future opportunities and help me gain a sense of structure within my career path.

One of my strengths within the research field would include my keen observational skills that tie well with my strong note taking abilities whether done online or on paper. I have more experience collecting data through interviews and working with qualitative studies but am flexible and open to gaining more experience with statistical work to better prepare myself for quantitative studies. Lastly, I have a solid style of finding references and scholarly articles that support or contradict my topic and overall help enhance my understanding of the subject.

Hello! My name is Kristen D’Anjou, I am a graduate student finishing up my thesis project this Spring. I am a part of the Language and Literacy program as Sac State. Prior to my MA program, I was a classroom teacher taught English Language Development courses to middle and high school students. I took a short teaching break at public schools and taught science-based programs at the Museum of Science and Curiosity. Now I am back in the classroom as a reading interventionist at the Language Academy in Sacramento.

Ultimately, I thought this fellowship program sounded exciting! I potentially want to work towards a PhD, and this fellowship is a first step in that direction. I am ecstatic to learn from people involved in larger scale research projects and to work alongside other graduate students. I hope to learn new research skills. I am more familiar with a mixed methods approach.

I am a Sociology major and cannot wait to build upon what I have learned during my studies and apply it to this program. The mission statement of the Pathways Fellows program aligns closely with my values and will allow me greater access to opportunities to advance equity within the realm of education. I believe this program will allow me to pursue this goal and provide an opportunity to advance my career. Through this fellowship, I hope to gain research experience while creating new connections with like-minded people and organizations. I am confident that my participation in this program and its associated apprenticeship will bolster my options, and I look forward to collaborating with a mentor. Even within the scope of education, it can seem like there are countless ways to approach research for the purpose of this program’s mission statement. As a result, I greatly appreciate the chance to learn from and be guided by a mentor. Although I have not previously conducted research, I am currently enrolled in the Research Methods course for sociology majors and hope to present at the S4 conference this year.

I applied to the Pathways Fellows Program to have a Mentorship which may deepen my understanding of interdisciplinary research methods, and to enhance my skills in applying DisCrit theory, Principles of Disability Justice, and Feminism in educational contexts. This program aligns perfectly with my graduate studies in Gender Equity in Education and professional work as an ASL Interpreter supporting the Faculty of the College of Education.

As a fellow, I aim to expand my professional network within the academic community and to gain insights from experienced mentors in research and adjacent fields of study. I am eager to engage in collaborative projects that will contribute to my knowledge and practical skills, particularly in addressing issues related to gender, race, disability, and employment in higher education settings.

My research strengths lie in qualitative methodologies, focusing on narrative analysis and case studies. I have developed competencies in interpreting complex social dynamics through a lens of intersectionality, particularly in the context of gender and disability in employment and educational environments. My experience working as an Interpreter and my academic background provide me with a unique perspective and skill set for conducting inclusive and empathetic research.

I decided to apply to the Pathways Fellowship program because I want to pursue graduate school with a focus in gaining a public research career that fights against gender-based violence. Not only does this program offer me an opportunity to join in hands-on educational research and mentor support, but I strongly believe that providing an equitable experience in education also supports victims of violence by offering resources to better understand and fight back against the structural oppressions that continue to marginalize vulnerable communities. In my time with the Pathways Fellowship, I hope to gain perspective from those within research-focused careers on what made them successful along with what challenges I can expect to overcome in exploring further academia and navigating my intended career. I also desire to positively impact our community here in Sacramento with the projects I get to aid in, working with like-minded individuals who value equitable solutions and gaining intersectional perspectives.

I have continued to build on my research skills both here at Sacramento State and in my professional experience within the restaurant industry over the last ten years. Academically, I have excelled in my courses with particular strengths in statistics, social psychology, and writing. My interests in school have transferred over to my professional career as I have focused on creating a more inclusive work environment, building equitable company resources and collaborating throughout the company to create active change. I hope this program further adds new skills along with building on these pre-existing ones.

I applied to the Pathways Fellows program because I saw the program as an opportunity to get my foot in the door in education research. Professor Brooks noticed my interest in education policy reform and referred me to a program where we would get paid to conduct education research alongside faculty mentors and educational institutions. I knew this program was going to propel my success in the right direction

I hope to gain necessary research and professional skills to succeed in my long-term career goals. Being a Pathways Fellow is a fruitful experience, and so I hope to be able to strengthen my passion for education-related research.

I intend on extending my academic and professional network, as well. One of my close friends told me that it's not about what you know, it is not even about who you know, it is about who knows you. So, I hope to extend my connections far and establish a community surrounding my professional interests.

My research strengths include quantitative data analysis- I really enjoy mathematics and statistics, creative problem solving, analytical research, and cause and effect research.

I applied to the Pathways Fellowship program to help me gain a better understanding of how to conduct educational research in a proper format. The summer apprenticeship also captivated my interest because I'll be working one-on-one with the mentor to gain a better understanding of educational research. The guidance that this program has to offer when applying for graduate school is very beneficial to my future ambitions and goals that I have set for my major.

I expect to gain more experience conducting qualitative and quantitative research. I also want to develop more life skills to be able to work in a professional setting when it comes to research. Being a fellow would also help me perform in a group setting and get hands-on experience when it comes to my career occupation.

For quantitative research, I believe my strongest research skill is data collection by collecting them through observations, surveys, and or questionnaires. For qualitative research, I feel my biggest strength is interviewing and case study analysis, I’ve done a lot of them throughout my studies. Overall my general research skills come from critical thinking, communication, and literature review.

I have applied to the Pathways Fellows Program in the hope of gaining knowledge and skills, and especially an apprenticeship to help me move forward to my career goal. Thanks to Dr. Fong for telling me about the program information that made me interested in helping me in Graduate school and my career job. After hearing about this program, I was able to decide to apply for this program.

I hope to gain more knowledge and skills to help me down my journey. I wish to also gain an apprenticeship and learn from my mentor to become a better independent individual for my career. I want to be able to learn more things and overcome many challenges.

My research skills/strengths are quantitative and use surveys as a collection method of data. I love to meet people and love their input, answers, or opinions about my research topic. This helps me to collect more information on the topic that I chose and discover many new data.

I applied to become a Pathways Fellow because I loved the message that it represented. From the moment that my Professor Aceves-Azuara told me about this program I knew I wanted to be involved with it. I believe the research we are conducting is important and want the opportunity to contribute. I also hoped to gain a mentor and support system that will help me prepare for Grad school. I believe that this program will give me the skillset and knowledge I need to be successful in my education journey.

What I hope to gain from becoming a fellow is a sense of community. Being a first-generation college student is a scary experience, you do not have anyone to ask for help and you are constantly trying to prove to yourself that you do belong in higher education. I hope to gain a mentor that will teach me new skills and knowledge that will set me up for success for my future career and classes. I hope to gain an apprenticeship which will allow me to gain experience and contribute my skillsets back to the community.

My research strengths are strongly reflected in qualitative research. I am currently a research assistant in a cooperative research lab for now going on two semesters. I am constantly outreaching for participants to partake in our study. I then conduct interviews, transcribe, code them, and then use them to help develop my research. I have been trained to conduct interviews outside of an ethnocentric view which makes me able to see things that others might miss. I always go into my research with open eyes. I also have experience with quantitative research using data sets to find trends that I then can use to develop my research. I am familiar with SPSS and creating graphs.

Dr. Aaminah Norris is Associate Dean of Research and Engagement (interim) for the College of Education at Sacramento State. She is also the Founder, and CEO of UhHidden Voices a Black woman-owned educational consultancy based in San Francisco, CA. The overarching objective of her research is to examine and address inequities in access to high-quality STEM instruction for Black and Latinx high school girls. To do so, she examines culturally responsive practices and centers the pedagogies of Black women teachers. Dr. Norris also teaches and researches digital and social media to do the vital work of disrupting racism and anti-blackness within and beyond schooling. She has successfully led initiatives that focus on Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB), contributing to the growth of the Capital Institute for Education and Sacramento State’s Anchor University Initiative. Dr. Norris has a demonstrated record of securing significant grant funding, including a $1,000,000 award for the CS for All-Expanding Girl Power by Design project funded by the National Science Foundation. As a Visiting Scholar at the University of Bologna, Italy, she conducts research that explores the development of STEM and global identities of racial and ethnic minoritized girls within both the Sacramento Metro region in Northern, California, and Emilia Romagna, in Northern Italy. Dr. Norris has trained thousands of educators and authored curricula for more than 10,000 Kindergarten-12th grade schools, colleges, and universities in 20 countries including the United States, Italy, United Kingdom, Brazil, Australia, Qatar, and Taiwan.

Dr. Chloe Burke (pronouns: she/hers) is Associate Professor of History at Sacramento State and coordinator of the History BA/Social Science Subject Matter Program. Dr. Burke teaches courses in US history and senior seminars for history majors planning a career in K-12 education. Dr. Burke earned her PhD in history at the University of Michigan where she studied visual culture, race, gender, and class, and the history of disease. Dr. Burke’s current research interests stem from her extensive experience collaborating with LEAs in the Sacramento region to design programs for history teachers funded by the Department of Education (Teaching American History) and National Endowment for the Humanities (Landmarks of History and Culture Workshops for Teachers). Dr. Burke’s current project is concerned with equity and access to National History Day (NHD), a co-curriculum PBL K-12 historical research program and contest. She is a member of leadership teams for the NHD Sacramento County and California programs, prepares Sac State students to be NHD judges, and helps to coordinate the County and State Finals contests each spring.

Drawing from Critical Race Theory, Abolition, and Care, my work explores mechanisms of power (racialized and gendered) to conceptualize new pathways toward liberation through medical health/intervention, education, and collective coalition (i.e., organization, mutual aid, etc.). More specifically, in such exploration, I centralize the hospital as a living, breathing organization in which White Supremacy, Patriarchy, and Heteropatriarchy materialize through the policies and practices to render medical care services, treatment, and resources insufficient for racialized groups, particularly Black birthers. Simultaneously, the state (i.e., the governing body of the nation) legitimizes the hospital's policies and practices, and in doing so, racism, sexism, and heterosexism become a natural and permanent byproduct engraved into civil society. To challenge heavily gendered anti-Blackness, I work with Black doulas and midwives to understand what radical transformation looks like when all medical practices are developed from a position of care as a mechanism to challenge White Supremacy, Patriarchy, and Heteropatriarchy and what our pathway toward liberation look like through birthing care and Blackness.

My work broadly explores and challenges racial power in the education, carceral, and healthcare systems. Through an intersectional approach, I engage in scholarship that seeks to build newer worlds rooted in harm reduction.

Dr. Clarence George III is a first-generation college graduate and graduate school student. He was born in Stockton California where he attended Franklin high school. Dr. George III has expanded his research to a global scale by looking at the application of culturally relevant pedagogy. Dr. George’s research focuses on Afrocentric pedagogy and African historiography. In addition to the study of Afrocentric pedagogy, Dr. George III has a strong concentration in the study of classical civilizations such as the early civilizations of the Great Lake region of central Africa and early Nile valley civilizations. Dr. George III holds a bachelor's degree in communication studies from Sacramento State University, a master’s degree in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University and received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in the Department of African American and African Studies. Dr. George is a curriculum consultant and has a recent publication entitled Africana Digital Pedagogy, Cultural Exchange, Learning, and Innovation. Dr. George is a faculty mentor in the Cooper-Woodson College Enhancement Program. The Cooper-Woodson College Enhancement Program (CWC) was founded in 1990 as an Educational Equity, Pan African Student Retention Program, through the leadership of Dr. Otis Scott, Chris Glen, and David Covin.

I am a scholar-practitioner in the fields of educational psychology, literacy, and special education. My main research interest falls within the intersection of cognition, instruction, disciplinary literacy development, and social justice pedagogy. My overall research agenda is to understand the teaching and learning of disciplinary literacies in both print-based and digital environments for marginalized students of color. I am currently studying the cognitive processes involved in reading and writing from multiple sources to develop critical thinking and civic consciousness among students with learning differences. I am also interested in how compassionate pedagogy can be a tool to dismantle the deficit-thinking model in education and train teachers to be socially just and equitable teachers. My works have been published in the Journal of Social Studies Research, Reading and Writing Quarterly, Journal of Curriculum Studies and Research, Teaching Exceptional Children, and the Reading Teacher. I have also written book chapters for edited books published by Routledge, Lexington Books, and Information Age Publishing.

Heidy Sarabia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at California State University, Sacramento. She teaches Statistics, Methods, Sociology of Globalization, Social Movements, Social Change and Migration in Latin America, and the introductory class to the Sociology Department at CSU Sacramento.

Her research focuses on globalization processes such as global stratification, borders and borderlands, border violence, transnational social change and mobilizations, immigrant adaptation and incorporation in the U.S., and educational experiences among Latinx/Xicanx students in higher education—especially among undocumented and DACAmented students, first generation, and Chicanx/Latinx students in the context of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI).

Dr. Sarabia has experience collecting data using various methods. She has conducted ethnographic research with Zapatista activists and border activists, as well as in-depth interviews with people living along the border and in South Philadelphia. She has also collaborated in the collection of surveys among undocumented students in California and first-year college students from Stockton, and surveys and interviews with undocumented and DACAmented students at Sac State.

Her current projects include: (1) exploring the educational experiences of ChicanxLatinx and first generation students in the context of institutions where they are the demographic majority (Hispanic Serving Institutions); (2) exploring factors that shape engagement among college students; (3) collecting data on the experiences of immigrants who change legal status; and (4) collecting data about migrant activists in Sacramento; and (5) collecting data about the experiences of potential, current, and future Sociology students in the labor market.

As a trainer of school psychologists at California State University, Sacramento, I work to ensure that our graduate students are equipped to use scientifically supported approaches to screening and psychoeducational assessment, and academic and social-emotional intervention. In addition to my teaching responsibilities, I maintain an active research program investigating topics related to school mental health and psychoeducational assessment practices. I am interested in empowering youth with minoritized identities, such as youth with disabilities. My research has been published in a variety of academic outlets, including the Journal of School Psychology, School Mental Health, and Educational Administration Quarterly. I serve as Associate Editor of the academic journal Contemporary School Psychology, and as Program Chair for the School Culture, Community, and Climate Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. I am also a member of the editorial boards of two academic journals, the Journal of School Psychology and Psychology in the Schools.

PORFIRIO M. LOEZA was a bilingual teacher in California for many years. He is a professor in the Teaching Credentials Department at Sacramento State. His teaching experience reaches across all grade levels. In fact, he currently holds several California teaching credentials, including in Multiple Subjects, Bilingual Cross-Cultural Specialist (Spanish), Reading/Language Arts Specialist, and a Spanish Single Subjects credential. He completed his undergraduate degree as well as three graduate degrees at the University of California at Berkeley. His doctoral degree is in Language, Literacy and Culture. He specializes in sociocultural theory, 1^st and 2^nd language acquisition (SLA), sociolinguistics and ethnomethodology. While at Berkeley, he was co-advised and mentored by the linguist Lily Wong Fillmore and Dean Eugene Garcia. He was also able to work under the guidance of the anthropologist John U. Ogbu which ultimately led to his dissertation research. Despite his move from K-12 and to university, Dr. Loeza continues to keep abreast of the changing trends in schools. He regularly visits classrooms and frequently provides guest lessons in the K-12 setting. For the past two decades he has been the lead international consultant for two national bilingual literacy plans in the countries of Guatemala and Dominican Republic.

We are a diverse, passionate team committed to creating an inclusive and resilient economy through a postsecondary ecosystem that centers the needs of all students and advances shared prosperity. We are proud to represent the diversity of our state and have decades of cross-disciplinary expertise that propels us forward in the work we do.

California will provide a world-class education for all students, from early childhood to adulthood. The Department of Education serves our state by innovating and collaborating with educators, schools, parents, and community partners. Together, as a team, we prepare students to live, work, and thrive in a multicultural, multilingual, and highly connected world.

Marshall the professional educator resources of Sacramento State’s College of Education and its partners so that young people in Sacramento reach their full potential as engaged citizens, well-adjusted individuals, active community contributors, and rigorous thinkers and knowledge producers particularly suited for the information and creative economy.

In a rapidly changing world, we believe in the power of community colleges – and the people and communities they reach and serve – to be the building blocks of a better future. As the official nonprofit supporting the largest system of higher education in the nation, we serve as a hub for innovation and impact at scale.

The CSU system prepares great educators, and the Educator Quality (EdQ) Center helps make it happen. We provide data to enhance educator preparation—and support all campuses in applying these data to improve their programs and results.

Our research helps make sense of complex education issues in California and identifies existing gaps and opportunities.

The Institute for Social Research supports the broader community in finding data-informed answers to their most pressing questions. We partner with community-based organizations, local and state entities, and businesses, who support the growth and well-being of the Greater Sacramento Region and the state. We work closely with our partners to customize projects that meet their own organizational and community needs – whether that is community listening sessions, technical support, program/policy evaluation, or a comprehensive research study.

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Our strategic functions include:

• Data Collection and Management
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Information Resources & Technology (IRT) powers the technology behind mission critical resources, strategic University goals, and the essential work of faculty, staff, and students.