Hello OCEAN Community,
As this past year comes to a close, I wish everyone a rejuvenating summer, and a thank you for helping to build a vibrant community together (even over Zoom). OCEAN has completed three years now, as an initiative to support research-practice partnerships between the UCI School of Education and partners across Orange County. We've had many milestones to celebrate and I want to share just a few to illustrate the rich array of work that all of you in OCEAN are doing.
- We had over 15 doctoral students participate in OCEAN this past year and were the first to complete our Community Research Fellows program (more details later in the newsletter).
- We've created an infrastructure that has supported numerous research-practice partnership projects. These projects have been supported by over $1 million in gifts from local supporters and over $8 million in external grants from agencies such as the Spencer Foundation, WT Grant Foundation, Institute of Education Sciences, National Science Foundation, Gates Foundation, and NewSchools Venture Fund. The recognition of our partnerships in OCEAN has grown substantially over the last three years.
- We've had such a rich array of community partnerships that have worked on diverse issues around the county. Some highlights and topics include: supporting youth and families with learning during the pandemic; supporting strategies to address pandemic isolation and social-emotional wellness; youth participatory action projects to support student voice in their schools; convening county agencies to improve systems that serve foster and housing insecure youth; integrating technology for students with special learning needs; increasing access to college for Latinx and Black students in Orange County; supporting career access and CTE programs; supporting mathematics teachers in improving their practice and pedagogy; promoting effective bilingual education; and promoting early childhood STEM learning.
Our faculty and students have also been innovative scholars, leading the way in national discussions about RPP work. Some highlights include Socorro Cambero receiving a prestigious graduate research fellowship for her RPP work from the National Science Foundation, Chris Wegemer and Jennifer Renick publishing about their RPP work in AERA Open, a forthcoming book about inclusion and technology integration from OCEAN student Yenda Prado that will be published by the MIT press, and recent scholarship from OCEAN faculty such as Dr. Adriana Villavicencio (more details below).
There are so many more community partnership, projects, and accomplishments beyond just these highlights. I am very thankful to support such a vibrant community, and I wish you all the best as we refresh for the next academic year.
Best,
Director & Associate Professor
UCI School of Education
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Congratulations to the graduate students who completed an OCEAN Community Research Fellowship during the 2020-2021 school year. To earn this formal recognition, these graduate students completed coursework on Research Practice Partnerships and Design Based Implementation Research, participated in a formal community engaged research partnership, contributed to the OCEAN community through service opportunities, and consistently attended OCEAN seminars. We are so grateful to each of them for their hard work and participation. |
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How to become an OCEAN Community Research Fellow |
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OCEAN invites doctoral students who want to integrate their emerging skills as researchers with a focus on making an impact with local communities. If you are interested in this work, we encourage you to join OCEAN as Community Research Fellows (CRFs). All interested doctoral students are welcome to join OCEAN and to complete the Fellowship activities (regardless of whether you are officially funded on a project or not). To participate you will commit to participate in several ways (outlined below) and upon successful completion of this participation will receive formal recognition through OCEAN.
Benefits
- You can signal this formal CRF recognition on your CVs.
- You will have developed deep relationships with UCI scholars who conduct partnership research in education, and can list these advisors on your CV.
- You will have access to participate in broader scholarship, networking, and experiences that signal your growing expertise in partnership methods.
How to Participate
- Attend the Community Based Research Workshop Series for the entire academic year (Fall, Winter, Spring).
- Volunteer with a local partner. You might join in with an existing OCEAN site and collaborate with an experienced OCEAN GSR (we can make introductions). Or you may have your own site that you work with already, and can build from that.
- Regularly interact with Faculty Mentors and peers. We’ll invite you to a shared OCEAN calendar which outlines available office hours and mentorship opportunities.
- Assist with OCEAN operations and community development, by taking on a small, specific task for the year (website, newsletter, community coordination, etc.)
- Complete the SOE course sequence on community-focused research at some point in one’s doctoral curriculum: Course 1: Research-Practice Partnerships & Course 2: Design Based Implementation Research
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Dr. June Ahn and Dr. Fernando Rodriguez Receive IES Training Grant |
Congratulations to Dr. June Ahn and Dr. Fernando Rodriguez for recently being awarded at $1.5 million IES Training Grant for their project: Career Pathways for Research in Learning and Education, Analytics and Data Science (CP-LEADS). The CP-LEADS program will recruit 60 undergraduate students from the UCI campus and support them in learning data science and analytics skills, partner with community agencies (including OCEAN) to apply those skills on research projects, and successfully enter into graduate programs in educational data science and learning analytics. The goal of the training grant is to broaden participation and develop more inclusive and diverse pipelines of students into these fields.
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Dr. Adriana Villavicencio Receives Hellman Fellowship |
Dr. Adriana Villavicencio receives $50,000 Hellman Fellowships, which are bestowed annually to support research by junior faculty. She joins an elite group of 63 UCI Hellman Fellows since 2013, when the Hellman Fellows Fund established the program here. Her project is titlted “Disrupting Racism in Schools: Studying the Outcomes of a Yearlong Racial Justice Program.”
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Dr. Kim Gomez & Dr. June Ahn receive grant from the WT Grant Foundation |
Congratulations to Dr. June Ahn and Dr. Kim Gomez (UCLA) on their recent $600,000 grant from the WT Grant Foundation. This project will combine the RPP initiatives at UCI (OCEAN) and UCLA (Community Schools). The project team will explore how to create research-practice partnerships that can better use research toward the explicit goal of promoting anti-racist policies, programs, and classroom practices within partner K-12 schools. The project team includes Dr. Ung-Sang Lee (postdoctoral scholar) and Christopher Wegemer (current OCEAN student who will also be a postdoc on the project), who also co-wrote the grant with Co-PIs Ahn and Gomez.
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