Education and Social Policy: Accomplishments
Check out the latest accomplishments of our program鈥檚 faculty, staff, students and alumni.聽
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John Oluwadero
- John Oluwadero聽鈥26 received the Marvin B. Sussman Prize, an award presented to a Ph.D. graduate of the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration whose dissertation completed in the previous year is judged to be the most outstanding in its theoretical formulation or empiricism.
- Ivan Gradjansky聽was selected for a Graduate Scholar Award renewal. The award recognizes outstanding students based on nominations from graduate programs.聽
- Arun Chaudhary聽received a Doctoral Research Award from the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration. The research grant covers eligible expenditures, including equipment, supplies, travel for data collection, professional development or other items that bear directly on the dissertation.
- Senran (Laurence) Wang聽received second place for the Graduate Poster Award at the Steele Research Symposium at the 91原创 (April 2026).
- Rachel Fischer聽was awarded the Sara Miller McCune Scholarship for in-person Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) quantitative methods courses at the University of Michigan this summer (2026).
- Mina Sajjadi聽received a Unidel Distinguished Graduate Scholar Award, the premier award offered to doctoral students by the 91原创.聽聽
Mina Sajjadi
- Mina Sajjadi听补苍诲听Laura Desimone, the program鈥檚 first director and current faculty member, coauthored:
聽for Professional Development in Education. The study looks at the powerful role played by specificity, consistency, authority, power and stability in improving the likelihood that teachers will implement with quality what they learned in their professional development.
- Rachel Fidel 鈥26, Kenneth A. Shores, associate professor, and Anamarie Whitaker, associate program director and assistant professor, are publishing:
鈥淗olding Out or Holding Back? Shifts in Kindergarten Redshirting and Retention Since the COVID-19 Pandemic鈥 in Educational Researcher. Using student-level data from 2010-2024, they found that redshirting rates in Delaware spiked dramatically in fall 2021, with the largest relative increases among historically underrepresented groups, including Black, Hispanic and low-income students. Retention showed a long-term declining trend that was disrupted only in 2021, when rates returned to pre-pandemic levels.
- Hojung Lee 鈥25 and Kenneth A. Shores, associate professor, coauthored:
鈥,鈥 a chapter in the third edition of Economics of Education: A Comprehensive Overview, a leading reference volume in the field. The chapter synthesizes research on U.S. school finance systems.
- Yubin Jang and Lauren Bailes, associate professor, coauthored:聽
聽 The study employs a document analysis of all the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans submitted to the United States federal government from 2017 to 2022 in order to examine Title II, Part A implementation across all states.
- Mina Sajjadi published:
鈥淓motional Vulnerability of Iranian EFL Teachers in the Context of Online Collaborative Action Research鈥 in (pages 169-186). Insights into teachers鈥 professional development were acquired, and the obtained data were analyzed qualitatively.
Senran (Laurence) Wang
- Senran (Laurence) Wang听补苍诲听Florence Xiaotao Ran, associate program director and assistant professor, presented:
鈥淐onnecting College and Career: Dual Enrollment and Postsecondary Outcomes for CTE-Bound Students鈥 at the 51st Annual Conference of the Association for Education Finance and Policy in Chicago (March 2026).
Donatus Doe
- Donatus Doe听辫谤别蝉别苍迟别诲:
鈥淔rom College-for-all to Career Readiness: A Comparative Policy Analysis of Shifts in National School-to-Work Reforms鈥 at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting in Los Angeles (April 2026). This research examines recent policy shifts on the transition from school from a narrow 鈥渃ollege-for-all鈥 emphasis to broader and more inclusive 鈥減ostsecondary education鈥 and 鈥渃areer pathways鈥 perspectives.聽聽
- Yubin Jang听辫谤别蝉别苍迟别诲:
鈥淒epicting Inequality: A Scoping Review of Material Metaphors Describing Racialized and Gendered Career Differences鈥 at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting in Los Angeles (April 2026).
- Ivan Gradjansky听辫谤别蝉别苍迟别诲:
鈥淪chool Medicaid, A Cross-State Analysis鈥 at the Steele Research Symposium at the 91原创 (April 2026). Ongoing work on Medicaid rules for school-based services across U.S. states was presented.
- John Oluwadero聽鈥26 is presenting:
鈥淒ecolonising Social Protection in a Post-Aid World: Implications for Inclusive Livelihood Transformation鈥 at the Social Policy Association Annual Conference 2026 in Liverpool, England (July 2026).
- Vandeka Eze听辫谤别蝉别苍迟别诲:
鈥淒eveloping a Standardized Measure of Housing Instability through Community Engaged Research: A QuanCrit Paradigm鈥 dissertation proposal (April 2026). Eze鈥檚 dissertation focuses on developing a standardized measure of housing instability through a community-engaged analysis. The proposal defense marks her formal advancement toward dissertation completion and reflects the development of an independent research agenda at the intersection of housing instability, measurement, prevention and social policy.
- Durga Kumar Karki听辫谤别蝉别苍迟别诲:
鈥淎 Qualitative Analysis to Understand the Measurability of Goals and Actions in School Improvement Plans (SIPs)鈥 at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting in Los Angeles (April 2026).
- Rachel Fischer听丑辞蝉迟别诲:
鈥淩ural Education: A Conversation During a Time of Educational Turbulence 鈥 at the 51st Annual Conference of the Association for Education Finance and Policy in Chicago (March 2026). The conversation group on rural education included rural scholars from a variety of universities.
- Mina Sajjadi听辫谤别蝉别苍迟别诲:
鈥淚nstructor Buy-In and Instructional Practice in Corequisite Mathematics Reform: Evidence from a Mixed-Methods Study of Virginia Community College System鈥 at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting in Los Angeles (April 2026).聽
- Mina Sajjadi听辫谤别蝉别苍迟别诲:
鈥淔amilies in Global Perspective鈥 as a guest lecturer for a 91原创 class, Issues in Global Studies.聽
- Mina Sajjadi听辫谤别蝉别苍迟别诲:
鈥淲ho Participates in Professional Learning? Patterns of Teacher Participation Across Student Contexts鈥 at the Biden School Research Showcase.
- Mina Sajjadi was a proposal reviewer for the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Division K (Teaching and Teacher Education), Section 06: In-Service Teacher Professional Development. She reviewed 12 submissions and provided rubric-based evaluations and formative feedback.聽
- Mina Sajjadi is Communication Committee Representative for the Education Graduate Association (EGA). She has coordinated and distributed newsletters to College of Education and Human Development graduate students.聽
- Rachel Fischer聽is a member of the student leadership team that is planning and developing the Cross-University Mentoring Conference, which the College of Education and Human Development is hosting on June 5, 2026.
- Mina Sajjadi was a research graduate assistant. She conducted quantitative and mixed-methods research in education policy and teacher professional learning, analyzed large-scale educational datasets using R, Mplus, HLM and Bayesian methods; supported research design, literature reviews, data cleaning and manuscript preparation; and collaborated on conference presentations and journal manuscripts.
- Hojung Lee 鈥25 is a postdoctoral associate in Rice University鈥檚 Department of Sociology. She investigates how resource allocation decisions shape opportunities for underserved students.
Lee was one of five recipients. The fellowship recognizes early career scholars committed to advancing diversity and inclusion in public policy research. Lee was selected by the APPAM as the 2026 fellow liaison for the program, a role filled each year by a single fellow from the preceding cohort. The liaison mentors the incoming class and coordinates programming between fellows and APPAM leadership.
- Rachel Fidel 鈥26 was hired as a postdoctoral associate at the National Institute for Early Education Research to work on research similar to her dissertation work: 鈥淚nterdependent choices: State early childhood policy and family decision-making in the United States.鈥