Social Foundation Alumni Newsletter - 2012

SUMMER 2012

SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS of Education Teachers in the Movement Derrick P. Alridge’s new perspective on the American civil rights movement combines his scholarly interests in civil rights studies and African American education with the history of his new home state.

His newest project, called Teachers in the Movement, focuses on Virginia educators who participated in civil rights activities in and outside the classroom between the 1940s and the present.

“Civil rights historiography is very sparse on the topic of teacher activists during this period,” Alridge says.

“This area is ripe for study, and the Curry School and U.Va. should be a center of such study.”

His latest book, The Educational Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois: An Intellectual History, was the topic of his talk at the 2012 Walter N. Ridley Distinguished Speaker Series in March, where Alridge was the featured lecturer.

Read more at curry.virginia.edu/magazine

curry.virginia.edu/social-foundationsnewsletter Social Foundations is published by the Curry School ‘s Center for the Study of Higher Education and is sponsored by the Curry School of Education Foundation.

/// Social Foundations faculty: Derrick P. Alridge, Diane M. Hoffman, Carol Anne Spreen

New Beginning

Social Foundations program evolves with student interests

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his past year, Professor Derrick P. Alridge took the helm as the new program coordinator of Curry’s Social Foundations program. Alridge came to the Curry School after fourteen years at the University of Georgia, where he most recently served as professor of education and African American studies and director of the Institute for African American Studies. At Georgia, he also served as co-director of the Foot Soldier Project for Civil Rights Studies, an oral history and film documentary project.

Alridge hopes to expand Social Foundations course offerings and extend the reach of the program, particularly in Comparative and International Education. This year Comparative and International Education became one of two strands students may focus on as a primary area of research. He feels fortunate to work with professors Diane Hoffman and Carol Anne Spreen.

“Before coming to U.Va., I followed both Diane’s and Carol’s work and was very impressed,” he said. “I am excited about building a Comparative and International Education concentration in Social Foundations around their stellar scholarship and reputations.”

The new Social Foundations program also has developed a Critical Policy Studies and Social Theory strand.

This area of study draws on history, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy to offer humanistic approaches to studying education and schooling. Using one or more disciplinary approaches and grounded in a multiplicity of progressive social theories, Critical Policy Studies and Social Theory encourages students to illuminate class, race, gender, and sexuality in their analyses of past and contemporary educational policy issues and problems.

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Alridge hopes to expand Social Foundations course offerings and extend the reach of the program.

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continued from page 1 New Social Foundations courses on the horizon include Education in Post-Disaster Contexts, Globalization and Education, Theory and Social Policy, Historical Policy Analysis, Oral History Methods and Social Justice Movements, History of African American Education, Education, Schooling, and the Civil Rights Movement.

Another exciting development is the migration of the off-Grounds Social Foundations M.Ed. program from administration in the School of Continuing and Professional

Studies to the Curry School. The director and adjunct faculty of the off-Grounds program will join members of the on-Grounds Social Foundations faculty. The Social Foundations faculty is excited about this new development, and they see a great opportunity to further expand the program’s presence, especially in northern Virginia.

While Social Foundations is moving into a new stage of its history, the program hopes to build on the strengths and stellar reputation of the previous program.

“For decades, Social Foundations at U.Va. has been widely recognized as one of the preeminent programs in the country,” Alridge says. “My hope is that we can build on that reputation as we traverse the new frontiers of academia in the twenty-first century. I sincerely hope that graduates of Social Foundations will drop by the Curry School to visit us. We plan to do all we can to keep our former students involved with the Social Foundations family and community.”

From Education to Clean Energy

Social Foundations alumnus wins $20,000 to study sustainable growth in the solar industry

/// Kyle Rudzinski

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yle Rudzinski (M.Ed. ’08) will enter the UC-Berkeley MBA program this fall in a move to evolve from Department of Energy civil servant to clean energy businessman. Both sound far removed from his degree work in the Curry School, but not so much, he says.

“Working in clean energy will incorporate the interdisciplinary framework that is the essence of the Social Foundations program at Curry,” Rudzinski says.

“The education system is massive and has so many facets and components. To solve education challenges requires systems-level thinking and an interdisciplinary approach. Clean energy requires a similar approach. Curry taught me to think at the systems-level and to value systems approaches to challenges.”

Rudzinski, who was a goalkeeper on the Virginia varsity soccer team as an undergrad, came to this professional place in a

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roundabout way. Immediately after graduate school, he worked with the Virginia Athletics Foundation, but he also joined the nonprofit Bike and Build for a 4,000-mile ride to raise money for affordable housing in the U.S. The trip gave him an education he couldn’t get in school, as he witnessed economic hardship across America.

“I love education, but it wasn’t time for me to pursue that in my life,” he says. “I saw these other challenges that I wanted to face head on now.” He realized he was passionate about sustainable growth through clean energy, so in 2009 he went to work on energy policy with the U.S. Department of Energy.

In 2011 Rudzinski visited the Peruvian Andes as a volunteer trip leader with a Texas Tech University study abroad initiative. He installed solar energy systems with rural families, teaching undergrads firsthand about microfinance, solar energy systems, and the importance of electrification to development in impoverished areas.

“Access to energy is critical to development and to economic opportunity. Without light, children cannot study at night. Without electricity, rural families cannot stay connected to the rest of their country via radio. Electricity helps refrigerators keep immunizations and medicines cool enough to be stored and used,” he says, adding that 4.2 million Peruvians do not have access to electricity. He returned to Peru again this summer with Texas Tech—this time in the Amazon region.

Also last year, Rudzinski decided to make another course adjustment in his career path.

He applied for a Fulbright Scholarship to study Chilean solar energy policy at La Universidad de Chile. In addition, he applied for a scholarship

from the Center for Responsible Business at the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. He modestly assumed that his chances of winning either award were low, but he could not have been more wrong. He won them both.

The difficult decision to decline the Fulbright allows him to stay in the U.S. for now.

The Center for Responsible Business scholarship is awarded to a first-year MBA student with a commitment to changing the world through business. He will receive $10,000 per year for two years to explore the intersection of clean technology and sustainability throughout the solar energy supply chain. His goal is to integrate responsible material use and product recycling with sustainable growth in the solar industry.

“Without light, children cannot study at night. ” “I’ve seen the role of policy in spurring business, but policy can only move a market so far.

Smart businesses and utilities are needed to take renewables—and solar specifically—from a niche market to widespread adoption.”

Ultimately, he believes that clean energy can improve the quality of life for billions of people while moving us all one step closer toward global sustainability. “It creates opportunity and advances society technologically,” Rudzinski says. “Working the business side of clean energy will enable me to rapidly and positively impact the lives of many through jobs, cleaner air and water, and improved technology.”

Right to Education

Carol Anne Spreen advocates for world’s refugees

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ven though nations around the world have signed treaties and passed legislation guaranteeing the right to basic education for the children of refugees and asylum seekers, the majority of these children in many countries remain uneducated.

Carol Anne Spreen, assistant professor in the Social Foundations program, has focused her recent research on this issue, primarily concentrating in the country of South Africa.

“South Africa has passed legislation guaranteeing the right to basic education of refugees and asylum seekers,” she says. “Yet, our preliminary research found that a significant number of refugee and asylum-seekers’ households in the Johannesburg area were not sending their children to school, and the vast majority were not aware of their education rights. We also learned of serious violations and barriers preventing the attainment of the right to education of migrants in schools and communities around the country.”

Working with the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg, Spreen hopes her work will help both migrants and the public at large become more aware of education rights and hold schools and the state responsible for education rights violations.

Spreen has become an advocate for international education rights, working with the Right to Education Project in the UK, and on the United Nation’s Human Rights Working Group.

“As a socially engaged researcher, I have had a strong commitment to social justice and challenging inequality by advocating for rights in education,” Spreen says.

Her advocacy extends locally as well. Last fall, she worked with the U.Va. Law School and the Women’s Center to host a workshop on the Right to Education for Refugees in Virginia.

Read more about Spreen’s work at curry. virginia.edu/social-foundations-newsletter

Haiti Rising

Diane Hoffman studies children in Haiti

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ith the catastrophic earthquake of January 2010, Haiti jumped into the consciousness of much of the world. Diane Hoffman, associate professor, has been traveling to Haiti since 2007.

Working mostly in the Southwest region of the country, as well as in Leogane, the epicenter of the earthquake, she is conducting ethnographic research on the approximately one in ten children who leave their families to work as domestic laborers in the homes of others.

Two years after the earthquake, despite millions of dollars of aid and an international campaign to “build back better,” hundreds of thousands of people remain in displaced persons camps, and reconstruction in many places remains an elusive goal. With only fifty percent of children ever having any chance to attend school and extremely low levels of literacy as well as a very restricted employment sector, there is often little hope for a better future for so many of Haiti’s youth.

Hoffman hopes to understand children’s perspectives on their lives and the ways in

which kinship relations, family economies, spiritual practices, and cultural notions about education intersect to condition informal educational practices and aspirations for social mobility. Ultimately, she hopes to use the results of her research to develop non-schoolbased educational opportunities for the many children who will never have a chance at formal schooling.

She is also a partner in a countrywide ethnographic study of violence against children—the largest ethnographic study ever undertaken in Haiti—which will contribute to a baseline of knowledge for future development work in the country.

This summer she will return to Haiti to continue her research and deliver a professional development seminar for Haitian teachers.

Read more about Hoffman’s work at curry.virginia.edu/social-foundations-newsletter

Hayes Examines Prison Education Recent qualitative research conducted by doctoral student Anne Hayes defies stereotypes of incarcerated men and highlights the positive impact of prison-based education programs.

Since first touring a Virginia correctional center (unnamed to protect participant confidentiality) in 2009, Hayes has spent hundreds of hours visiting, volunteering as a teacher and group discussion leader, and eventually interviewing six participants in the Make It Happen program.

“It’s inspiring to be around people coming into their own,” Hayes says. “College education has helped them make some powerful connections in their lives and refocus their priorities.”

The Make It Happen program, sponsored by Southside Virginia Community College, functions as a mentoring community and targets retention of African American men in community college. Students in the prison can earn vocational certificates and associates degrees, and all current and former college students live together in a designated building.

“Two things keep me returning to the prison and to the Make It Happen group,” Hayes says, “the students’ personal growth and their desire to help others to change.” She adds that she does not glorify prisons as wonderful places. “Rather, it inspires me that personal change and growth can occur even in forgotten, broken places like prison.”

Despite media portrayals of prisons as training grounds for criminals, Hayes says she has glimpsed another possible outcome: “The more compelling story is that prisons can also be sites of change and growth.”

Later this summer Hayes will defend her dissertation. Then, she will be looking for an academic position in which she can be involved in a university or community college and prison partnership. “I’m interested in a variety of aspects of postsecondary education in prison—teaching, research, policy creation, and program development,” she says.

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Social Foundations Alumni Newsletter P.O. Box 400268 417 Emmet Street South Charlottesville, VA 22904-4268

CLASS NOTES Leza Conliffe (M.Ed. ’03), formerly in the Education Law practice group of a northern Virginia law firm, has joined the Office of General Counsel as a senior staff attorney for the National School Boards Association based in Alexandria, Va. Barbara Conner (M.Ed. ‘05), after spending 10 years with Fairfax County Public Schools (most recently as the College and Career Center Specialist at West Potomac High School in Alexandria) made a big change and moved to Middleburg, Va., where she says she is living on a boarding school campus and serving as the Director of College Counseling for 160 amazing young women.

Mark Desjardins (M.Ed. ‘92, Ph.D. ‘95) is finishing his 13th year as head of school and his second year as head of St. John’s School, a K-12 independent school serving 1300 students located in Houston, Tex. The Very Reverend Zachary Fleetwood (M.Ed. ‘80), Dean of the American Cathedral in Paris from 2003-1011, has accepted a call to a new ministry as Rector of St. Columba’s-by-the-Castle Episcopal Church in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Courtney Hunt (M.Ed. ‘91) is the founder of a digital community/think tank called Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs). She also founded Renaissance Strategic Solutions, which was recently certified by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council as a Women’s Business Enterprise.

Michael Hunter (M.Ed. ’11) and Linda Farrell (M.Ed. ’11) recently worked with the Global Partnership for Education on the Early Reading in National Languages Project in The Gambia. They felt well prepared for their first international project because of all they learned about international 4

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Submit your class note at curry.virginia.edu/classnotes education in their Social Foundations classes at the northern Virginia campus. Part of their work was developing lessons for a pilot program to teach first graders to read in the language they speak. Michael trained literacy coaches in the Gambia, and he made a presentation about his work at an international conference in Rwanda.

Jay Jackson (M.Ed. ‘85) is Senior Director of Development for Washington & Lee University with responsibilities in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas and the cities of Washington, D.C., and Memphis.

Mee Joo Kim (M.Ed. ‘11) is now a PhD student at the University of Washington-Seattle studying Curriculum and Instruction-Multicultural Education.

Polly Liss (M.Ed. ‘82) says, “Always a volunteer in the Arlington Public Schools, I’ve served on a number of its citizen advisory committees.

Although I am age 84 and no longer a resident of Arlington County, I am still active with Arlington’s Career, Technical, and Adult Education Advisory Committee as an ex-officio member. I maintain a high interest in Career Education.

Kathleen Manzo (M.Ed. ‘94) recently returned to Education Week newspaper to head up online news operations. She had been a reporter at Edweek writing about curriculum and standards, state and federal education policy, from 1996-2010. She then took a position at a communications firm as director of education policy and outreach, The Hatcher Group, where she worked with foundations and nonprofit clients on national campaigns related to reading achievement and child wellbeing.

Ellen Ramsey (M.Ed. ‘00) is currently Knowledge Integration Manager at the U.Va. Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. She works with a diverse and talented team of librarians on education, innovation, and library services for groups in academic and clinical areas.

Julie Roa (M.Ed. ‘10) says, “I love my student affairs job at the University of Virginia!” She directly supports the development of undergraduate students by listening, empowering, and encouraging collaboration among individuals and among groups.

She promotes intercultural dialog, awareness, and celebration across grounds.

Jay Roberts (M.Ed. ‘00) is an associate professor of Education & Environmental Studies at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind. He was recently named a Teagle Pedagogy Fellow by the Great Lakes College Association. He published the book Beyond Learning by Doing: Theoretical Currents in Experiential Education (Routledge). He blogs at http://jaywroberts.wordpress.com Chris Wilcox-Elliott (Ph.D. ’11) was selected to receive the 2012 Dalton Institute’s Dissertation of the Year Award. He received a complimentary registration to the 2012 Dalton Institute on College Student Values and a $500 award for future research.

His dissertation was titled Authentic Masculinities: A Dialogical Narrative Study of College Men Exploring Gendered and Spiritual Identities.

Read more. Some submissions were abbreviated due to lack of space. You can read complete class notes online at curry. virginia.edu/social-foundations-newsletter.