Education Studies Lectures and Events, Spring 2023

Education Studies Capstone Symposium

Capstone Symposium 2023

Date: Friday, March 24, 2023
Time: 4:30-6:30 p.m.
Location: CHI Think Tank

Please join the Education Studies class of 2023 for a showcase of their work. Each student will offer a brief research presentation and take questions from the audience. All are welcome to attend this multidisciplinary event, and ample refreshments will be provided.

Presenters are as follows:

August Bates: "Disability in the Elite Liberal Arts College Environment: Challenges and Recommendations for Improvement at Amherst College" 

Lucheyla Celestino: “Impacts of College Level Language Learning Environments: An Examination of How Heritage Speakers and Second Language Learners Experience Spanish at Amherst College and Beyond” 

E. J. Collins: "To Be Young, Conscious, and Black in North Carolina: The Decline of Institutions of
Radical Education and the Rise of Neoliberalism in Public Education (1960-1980)"

Avery Flynn: "Mademoiselle Flynn: A Non-native French Language Teacher, Learner, and Everything in Between"

Eugene Lee: ""The Legacy of Restrictive Language Policies: Question 2"

Tessa Levenstein: "Ray Fadden and the Akwesasne Mohawk Counselor Organization: How One Youth Organization Inspired a Generation of Indigenous Activism"

Masahiro Nishikawa: "A Still-alive Tradition of Black Radical Thinking: How Charter Schools Help Counter Neoliberal Ideology"

Joy Won: "Florence Nightingale: (Data) Feminist?"


A Conversation with Tressie McMillan Cottom

Cottom at UMass

Date: Wednesday, March 29
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Location: UMass Amherst, Student Union Ballroom, 41 Campus Center Way
Link to Register: Online registration

Tressie McMillan Cottom is a professor with the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill, a New York Times columnist, and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. She will speak on higher education. Registration for this event is encouraged but not required.

Professor Cottom’s first book, Lower Ed, captures how profit and debt moved from the margins of higher education to bankrupt the very heart of American meritocracy. She argues that bad federal policy, state disinvestment, amoral narratives about meritocracy, and prestige-driven cultures of traditional higher education all share responsibility for LowerEd. Influential change-makers like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and activists like The Debt Strike Collective cite her book as important for changing the conversation about higher education. 

This event is sponsored by the UMass College of Education and the Five College Consortium.


Education Studies Open House

EDST spring open house

Date: Thursday, March 30, 2023
Time: 4:30-5:30 p.m.
 
Location: CHI Think Tank

Prospective majors and other students interested in the program are welcome to join us for refreshments and conversation about Education Studies at Amherst. Bring your questions and we'll have answers!


Bearing Witness in Academia: Testimonio Methodology and Pedagogy

Judith Flores Carmona, New Mexico State University

Dr_Judith_Flores_Carmona

Date: Thursday, March 30, 2023
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Location: UMass, 163C Campus Center

With deep roots as an oral tradition, testimonios are used to divulge lived realities and enduring struggles of people who have experienced persecution, marginalization and oppression. Judith Flores Carmona will frame testimonio as a pedagogy and illuminate possibilities for incorporation into educational spaces to advance educational equity and liberatory education.

Dr. Judith Flores Carmona (PhD, University of Utah) is associate professor in the Honors College, faculty fellow for the Office of the Vice President for Equity, Inclusion and Diversity and affiliate faculty in Borderlands and Ethnic Studies at New Mexico State University (NMSU). Dr. Flores Carmona is the daughter of Josefina and Vicente (QEPD/RIP). She was born in Veracruz, Mexico, raised in South Los Angeles and is a first-generation college student and scholar. Her academic and community work is guided by a sense of responsibility and commitment to social justice. Her research and scholarship includes critical pedagogy, critical race feminism, critical multicultural education, and testimonio methodology and pedagogy. Her work has appeared in Equity and Excellence in Education, Qualitative Inquiry, in the Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education, and in Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, among others. She is currently co-editor of Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social.

This lecture is sponsored by the Office of Civic Engagement and Service-Learning at UMass Amherst, the Commonwealth Honors College, the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies at UMass Amherst, the Education Studies Program at Amherst College, and the Eastman and Lamont Lecture Funds of Amherst College.


The Power of Promising Free Tuition

Susan Dynarski, Harvard Graduate School of Education 

Dynarski photo

Date: Wednesday, April 12, 2023
Time: 5:00-6:00 p.m.
Location: Stirn Auditorium, Mead Museum

Professor Dynarski will speak on financial aid and increasing college access for disadvantaged students. Her lecture is sponsored by Amherst's Department of Economics, the Education Studies Program, and the Office of the Provost.

Susan Dynarski is Patricia Albjerg Graham Professor of Education at Harvard University. She is a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the National Academy of Education, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Carnegie Fellow. Dynarski’s research focuses on reducing inequality in education. She has consulted on education and tax policy with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, White House, Treasury, and the Department of Education. She has testified to the US Senate Finance and HELP Committees, the US House Ways and Means Committee, and the President's Commission on Tax Reform.

Education Studies Videos

Charter Schools at 30: the Promise and Pitfalls of the Charter School Movement

Professor Joanne Golann (Vanderbilt University) speaks on thirty years of charter schools. April 5, 2022.


group discussion on zoom

Education, Crisis, and Belonging Conversation Series

The Education Studies Initiative and the Multicultural Resource Center explore the challenges facing educational institutions and the possibilities for change during the time of the pandemic and of large-scale protests for racial justice.

speakers at a virtual event

Video Archive

Watch videos of past events presented by the department of Education Studies.