Monthly News | April 2025

Dear School of Education Community,  

I am honored to step into the role of Interim Dean for the UC Irvine School of Education. In my first few weeks, I’ve been inspired by the energy, dedication, and excellence that define this community.

This month’s newsletter highlights just a few examples of the meaningful work happening every day—through student success, impactful research, and schoolwide accomplishments. I look forward to supporting and celebrating more of this important work in the months ahead.

Julie Washington, Ph.D.

Professor & Interim Dean

UC Irvine School of Education

Faculty, doctoral student honored at LEAD dinner

Associate Professor Andres Bustamante and Ph.D. student Santiago Ojeda-Ramirez were recognized at the eighth annual Latine Excellence and Achievement Dinner, receiving the Outstanding Faculty Mentorship Award and a Student Achievement Award.

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School of Education ranks in Top 20

According to U.S. News & World Report, the school has once again been recognized as one of the top graduate schools in education in the nation, ranking No. 18 overall and No. 10 among public schools of education. $926K per-faculty member in research expenditures reaffirms the school's role as a leader in advancing educational policy and practice through research. 

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The intersection of AI and scholarly values

Earlier this month, Assistant Professor Shayan Doroudi discussed generative AI and using these applications with integrity with Duncan Pritchard, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, on the Anteater Insider podcast.

Listen now

Asli Sezen-Barrie delivers keynote on transformative climate education at USC

Sezen-Barrie, associate professor and the Stacey Nicholas Endowed Chair of Climate and Environmental Education, shared her bold vision in her address "Beyond Awareness: Transformative Climate Change Education for a Just and Thriving Future."

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TERTULIAS explores connection between language identity, power and opportunity

The initiative—short for Transforming Education through Reflections, Teaching, and Unique Language Integration in Authentic Settings—has fostered dialogue around multilingualism, linguistic diversity, and equitable educational practices over the past year.

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Celebrating Arab American Heritage Month

Islamic Geometric Art: An Interactive Workshop at the Intersection of Mathematics, Art, and Culture, presented by Assistant Professor Shayan Doroudi

Join us for a hands-on workshop exploring Islamic geometric art. Learn to create your own design using just a ruler, compass, and colored pencils while discovering the global influence of this art form—from centuries-old architecture to the UC Irvine campus. The workshop will also explore how Islamic geometry connects math, art, culture, and computing in meaningful ways.

RSVP today

In honor of Arab American Heritage Month, the UC Irvine Libraries offers a list of online resources and books that help document and honor the works of Arab Americans.

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2024-'25 Mary Roosevelt Honor Scholarship in Teaching & Learning

Pictured above are the recipients of the 2024-’25 Mary Roosevelt Honor Scholarship in Teaching and Learning. Vicki Vasques and Mary Roosevelt support the scholarship named in Roosevelt’s honor.

From left: Nicole Park (Multiple Subject Teaching Credential student), Kaitlyn Lo (MS), Audrey Ramirez (MS), Vicki Vasques (foundation trustee and alumni donor), Mary Roosevelt (alumni and former staff) Megan Larson (SS), Jared Serpa (Single Subject Teaching Credential student)

Rohrbacher (right) with Keynote Speaker Dr. Keith Curry

Using AI as fundraising tool

Duane Rohrbacher, Executive Director of Development at the UC Irvine School of Education, was a featured speaker at the 2025 Conference on Philanthropy, held at the Hilton Orange County in Costa Mesa, Calif.

In his presentation, “Ethical AI & Data-Driven Fundraising: Building Smarter Pipelines for Nonprofit Success,” Rohrbacher shared how he and his team are leveraging artificial intelligence to strengthen fundraising strategies and streamline outreach efforts. By integrating AI tools into their development workflow, the team has enhanced their ability to identify, engage, and cultivate donor relationships more effectively.

The event's keynote speaker, Dr. Keith Curry, President of Compton College and CEO of the Compton Community College District, is also a proud UC Irvine School of Education alumnus (Class of '11).

School of Education receives NNERPP Youth Voice 4 RPPs Award

The grant will support YouthCARES, a new research-practice partnership that brings together students, educators and researchers to co-design climate justice curriculum and promote civic action.

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UC Irvine Science Project implements Computer Science Community of Practice

The yearlong professional learning initiative provided middle- and high school educators the tools and support to increase their knowledge during monthly sessions, enabling them to apply what they learned in their classrooms.

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La Academia, an internationally recognized Santa Ana-based soccer academy, empowers local youth to pursue dreams of higher education and professional soccer. Through a new partnership with UC Irvine’s OCEAN, the academy invites UCI students to get involved in bridging scholarship, sport, and opportunity.

Photo from their youth tournament at the historic Rose Bowl.

SAGE Scholars winter/spring newsletter

Read the Student Achievement Guided by Experience (SAGE) Scholars Program latest newsletter, and find out more about their most recent group of students, Cohort #26; follow up on the annual SAGE Leadership Summit; and other news from the program, celebrating their 25^th anniversary this year.

Learn more

Upcoming Events

Featured event: Desegregation in Schools: Before and After Brown v. Board

Date: May 2, 2025

Time: 9:00-3:00

Location: UCI Division of Continuing Education

On May 2, the UC Irvine School of Education's MAT program, Teacher Academy, CalTeach, and History Project will host “Desegregation in Schools: Before and After Brown v. Board,” an event for 160 future teachers exploring the history of school desegregation through California cases like Tape v. Hurley and Mendez v. Westminster. With speakers from the UC Irvine Schools of Law and Education, and author Marie Chan, the event emphasizes how understanding this history can help educators reduce bias and better serve diverse student communities. Email teacheracademy@uci.edu for more information.

• April 22 – UC Irvine Giving Day
• April 26 – Centering Students in Science Classrooms, presented by the UC Irvine Science Project
• April 29 – Islamic Geometric Art: An Interactive Workshop at the Intersection of Mathematics, Art, and Culture, presented by Assistant Professor Shayan Doroudi
• June 9-11 – CRLP Learning How English Works Summer Institute
• June 10, 11, 24, 25 – Computer Science Community of Practice Cohort 2, presented by the UC Irvine Science Project
• June 10-11 – Oral History as Community History: Foundations and Futures Summer 2025 Workshop, sponsored by the UC Irvine Teacher Academy in partnership with the UC Irvine School of Humanities and UCLA Asian American Studies Center
• June 16-18 – CRLP Results for Reading Comprehension Summer Institute
• June 23-July 18 – Summer Institute 2025 – Into the Wild: Writing Beyond Boundaries, presented by the UC Irvine Writing Project
• June 23-24 – Desarrollando competencia sociocultural con lecturas en voz alta en español/Building Sociocultural Competence with Spanish Read Alouds, presented by the California Reading & Literature Project
• June 26, July 10 & 17 – Demystifying the CAST: Unlocking Student Success through Assessment, presented by the UC Irvine Science Project
• July 22, 24 & 29 – Climate Literacy and CA AB 285: Supporting Science Education in a Changing World, presented by the UC Irvine Science Project
• August 23 – Literacy is STEAM: Books for Science Workshop, presented by the UC Irvine Science Project

Please visit the Teacher Academy website to view more upcoming workshops.

• Professor Young-Suk Kim explains how reading and writing function as a powerful and closely related system, and examines how this system interacts with developmental phases, linguistic grain size, and reading and writing difficulties, including dyslexia (Science of Reading: The Podcast)
• Professor Gustavo Carlo outlines most important steps parents can take to ensure children grow up healthy (WalletHub)
• Working paper coauthored by Doctoral Student Aaron Ainsworth and Associate Professor Emily Penner found that a 10% increase in base pay for special education teachers has more than twice the impact of the same pay raise for general education teachers (National Council on Teacher Quality)

• Professor Gustavo Carlo and Doctoral Student Marixza Torres: “Economic stress indirectly predicts out-group prosocial behaviors during the Covid-19 pandemic differentially for young adults depending on ethnic group membership.” In: Discover Psychology
• Professor Gustavo Carlo: “The mediational role of anxiety and familism in the associations between mothers' and fathers' parenting behaviors and US Latine youth's aggression.” In: Journal of Latinx Psychology
• Chancellor’s Professor Carol McDonald Connor (posthumous) and Chancellor’s Professor Emerita Deborah Lowe Vandell: “Associations between school characteristics and learning gains for pre-K attenders and non-attenders: Important constructs, limited evidence.” In: Early Childhood Research Quarterly
• Assistant Professor Shayan Doroudi: "Looking Beyond a Single Score: Examining Student Mathematical Strengths Using ALEKS Data." In: Educational Assessment
• Distinguished Professor Greg Duncan: “A Research Note on Unconditional Cash Transfers and Fertility in the United States: New Causal Evidence.” In: Demography
• Lecturer Barry Goldenberg: “Strength Through Diversity: Harlem Prep and Rise of Multiculturalism" (book).
• Doctoral Students Kunlei He, Kelsyann Cervera and Julian Levine, Associate Professor Penelope Collins and Distinguished Professor Mark Warschauer: “Promoting Parent-Child Shared Reading with a Bilingual Conversational Agent.” In: International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
• Doctoral Student Jasmin Hernandez Santacruz and Distinguished Professor Judith Kroll: “Heritage speakers reveal the dynamics of bilingual language regulation.” In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 
• Doctoral Students Joseph Hin Yan Lam and Jiali Wang, and Professor Elizabeth Peña: “Spanish and English Morphosyntax Changes in Bilingual School-Age Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder: A 1-Year Longitudinal Study.” In: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 
• Professor Elizabeth Peña: “The Effect of Performance Feedback on the Implementation Fidelity of Narrative Mediated Learning Sessions by School-Based Speech-Language Pathologists.” In: Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools
• Associate Professor Emily Penner: “What Educator Applicants' Short Essays Tell You about Their Potential Job Fit and Performance.” In: Journal of Education Human Resources
• Professor Kylie Peppler: “Virtual Reality in Manufacturing Education: A Scoping Review Indicating State-of-the-Art, Benefits, and Challenges Across Domains, Levels, and Entities.” In: Human-Computer Interaction
• Associate Professor and Stacey Nicholas Endowed Chair of Climate and Environmental Education Asli Sezen-Barrie: “Transformative Climate and Environmental Education for a Just Future.” In: Science Education
• Assistant Professor Adriana Villavicencio and Doctoral Students Verenisse Ponce-Soria and Tiffany Wu: “Counter-narratives from Spanish and Mandarin-speaking parents navigating school choice in the United States.” In: Race Ethnicity and Education
• Doctoral Student Jiali Wang and Professor Young-Suk Kim: “Unpacking the Relation Between Oral Language and Written Composition: A Meta-Analysis.” In: Review of Educational Research
• Professor Di Xu: “Lessons from the State Noncredit Data Project: Building the Community College Data Infrastructure.” In: Rutgers Education and Employment Research Center

Learn more about the UCI School of Education as seen on Viewpoint, hosted by Dennis Quaid