2023 New Faculty Hires

Phillip A. Boda received his PhD from Teachers College, Columbia University in Science Education. His work focuses on justice-centered praxes that leverage cultural and disability studies to center subaltern voices. Often, he uses educational technology designed specifically for Urban Education contexts to disobey traditional grammar of what constitutes research in the name of ‘social justice.’ He has worked at The Learning Partnership as a Post-doctoral researcher, held an appointment at the University of California, Berkeley as a Post-doctoral Researcher in the WISE Research Group, and was also a Post-doctoral Fellow at Stanford University in the Science in the City Research Group. Boda’s work leverages the affordances of relationship-building with students, their local communities, and teachers to explore questions around the overlapping nexuses of historically marginalized identities (i.e., race, class, gender, disability, and native language). In this way, he draws on intersectionality, philosophies of liberation, and epistemic disobedience to challenge sustained colonialities of power in education.

Kaleb Germinaro received his PhD in Learning Sciences & Human Development from the University of Washington. He attended the University of Pennsylvania for his MA in Human Development and his BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics with a focus in Urban Studies. Germinaro moved to Philadelphia from Phoenix, where he grew up and played football, allowing him to play in college. His experiences have solidified his approach to disability, spatial and environmental justice through designing and implementing learning environments. He keenly pays attention to and focuses on space, how his disability and Blackness are supported and/or suppressed in spaces, and how he navigates justice and liberation through his spatial orientations. Many things are important to him; they all boil down to justice and liberation in many forms. Sometimes it looks like designing a lesson plan, and other times it looks like facilitating caring for friends. In his free time, he enjoys photography, biking, short (incline-less) strolls through the woods and his pup.

Jori N. Hall received her PhD in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an award-winning author and multidisciplinary researcher. Hall’s research is concerned with social inequalities and the overall rigor of social science research. Her work addresses issues of research methodology, cultural responsiveness, and the role of values and privilege within the fields of evaluation, education, and health. Hall has published numerous peer-reviewed works in scholarly venues; authored the book “Focus Groups: Culturally Responsive Approaches for Qualitative Inquiry and Program Evaluation” and was selected as a Leaders of Equitable Evaluation and Diversity (LEEAD) fellow by The Annie E. Casey Foundation. Hall is the 2020 recipient of the American Evaluation Association’s Multiethnic Issues in Evaluation Topical Interest Group Scholarly Leader Award for scholarship that has contributed to culturally responsive evaluation. She currently serves as a researcher for programs funded by the Spencer Foundation. She is also Co-Editor-in-Chief for the “American Journal of Evaluation.”

Van Lac earned her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. Prior to her graduate studies, she was a high school English teacher for eight years in Richmond, California, working in an under-resourced community serving primarily Black and Latinx students. She has a master’s degree in The Art of Teaching English from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the University of California-Berkeley. Growing up in Oakland, California, Van attended K-12 public schools in the Oakland Unified School District and is a first-generation Southeast Asian college student and academic faculty member. She has published in journals, such as “Urban Education”, “Equity and Excellence in Education”, “Qualitative Studies in Education”, “Qualitative Inquiry”, “Urban Review”, and “Educational Policy”. Her research focuses on how educational leaders can work alongside minoritized youth through participatory action research to enact social change and how to develop and/or strengthen the racial consciousness of K-12 students, educators, and aspiring school leaders.

Courtney Luedke received a PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MA in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BA in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Courtney Luedke’s research focuses on transforming Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) students’ experiences through anti-racist practices within higher education. Within this broader context, her research agenda focuses on a) educational access for BIPOC students across the educational pipeline; b) challenging racist institutional and organizational practices; and c) (re)imagining validating and inclusive educational environments. She adopts critical approaches to examine these issues by challenging power structures and promoting social change. As a trained sociologist and educational researcher, she uses critical qualitative research methods to explore students’ experiences in higher education environments. Luedke is a proud mamí scholar and a #ChingonaSisterScholar. She enjoys strength training and spending time in the sun and by the water. She is an avid lover of iced coffee and lattes and can be found exploring new coffee shops.

Gordon Palmer received his PhD in Higher Education and Psychology from the University of Michigan. He joined the Department of Educational Policy Studies as a Bridge to Faculty Fellow in Fall 2021. Palmer’s work is motivated by an effort to understand how Black people transform the places that they occupy into more just and compassionate places through meaning-making, cultural ideologies, compassionate relationships, and acts of justice. His emerging program of research broadly focuses on 1) examining the sociopolitical development of Black urban residents—with a particular focus on Black women college and graduate students—through innovative critical qualitative placed-based methodologies and 2) examining how parents, mentors, and spirituality influence the well-being and persistence of Black peoples generally and Black university students specifically. He takes on this work as someone dedicated to ethical, rigorous, and reciprocal research practices aimed at transforming the extant higher education understanding of urban residing Black students in the US into one that is more emic and inclusive.

David Banzer is a Bridge to Faculty postdoctoral research associate in Educational Psychology within the College of Education at the University of Illinois Chicago. He received his PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research focuses on early math, science, and engineering teaching and learning within preschool settings and early childhood teachers’ professional development and learning. His direct teaching work in early childhood education has focused on community-based organizations. He was a preschool teacher and an early childhood administrator supporting teaching staff within a community-based center supporting young children and families of primarily low-income Latinx and African-American communities. He developed and led early STEM professional learning communities for Head Start teachers. He has supported teacher licensure candidates in UIC’s early childhood alternative licensure program, providing support and coursework to teacher candidates teaching in community-based organizations within Chicago. As the lead content instructor for UIC’s early childhood education alternative licensure program, he developed residency coursework that supported teachers’ ongoing professional learning.

Qingli Lei is a Bridge to Faculty Fellow in the Department of Special Education. She earned her PhD in Educational Studies from Purdue University, with a focus on special education. Lei’s research interests include (1) Developing instructional scaffolds as components of interventions to improve mathematics and literacy performance for English learners with learning disabilities, (2) Analyzing teacher-student discourse moves to empower students’ mathematics reasoning and problem-solving skills, and (3) Exploring cognitive and non-cognitive factors that influence mathematics learning and achievement.