In Fall 2015, Dean Dan Schwartz announced a pilot program to support student-led initiatives that promote scholarly camaraderie and exchange at the Graduate School of Education.

The intent is to leverage the creativity, agency, and insight of our students to catalyze their own learning opportunities with others. Students receive financial support to design and execute activities that impact the GSE broadly. Projects selected enhance the existing strengths of the GSE by offering programs and events that supplement our current academic and co-curricular offerings. As a result, the projects reflect new order thinking, innovation, and pragmatism that ultimately make the GSE a better place to learn and thrive.

2023-2024 Award Winners

Building an Anti-Racist GSE

In recognition of the lack of both anti-racist methodological training and introduction to anti-racist literature offered by the GSE, students have organized a group to explore anti-racist pedagogies and methodologies, review field-relevant literature on anti-racist theories, and actively work at promoting anti-racist practices within the GSE. We do so by engaging in syllabus consultations with faculty in order to inform faculty of the diversity of their current syllabi, provide services to help them incorporate more voices into their coursework, and provide a thought partner to reimagine course pedagogy to be more equitable and proactively antiracist. When applicable, we also disseminate resources for faculty and/or students to inform their own research practices and perspectives.

CATE: Critical Approaches to Teacher Education

Critical Approaches to Teacher Education (CATE) will provide a space for graduate students to explore critical approaches to preservice and inservice teacher education that center intersectional justice, racial literacy, and abolitionist pedagogies. Through a speaker series and engagement with current research, we will participate in conversations to develop an understanding of critical approaches to teacher education in terms of pedagogy and program design; reflect on ways of implementing these approaches in our own practice; and build community with each other and critical teacher education scholars in and beyond Stanford.

ACA: Academic Collaborative Assembly

Academic Collaborative Assembly serves as an interdisciplinary space designed for Ph.D. students to present their ongoing research endeavors and academic projects. The primary aim of this program is to foster an environment of collaboration, constructive criticism, and scholarly dialogue, enabling participants to refine and enhance the quality of their research presentations and papers.

Education Across and Beyond Borders: A Learning Collective on Im/migration and Education

This working group centers scholarship at the intersections of im/migration, transnationalism, and education. We bring together transdisciplinary scholars working across educational spaces and those examining education policy, practice, and theory. We will explore and develop scholarship that responds to the needs of im/migrant youth and communities, that intervenes in dehumanizing discourses prevalent across educational and mainstream spaces, and that situates educational research on im/migrant youth in a larger sociopolitical and historical context. Through reading groups and in-progress research workshops, we offer an intellectual space for students to build community and learn from each other’s work.

EPIC: Education Practitioners and Innovators of China

Established in 2018, EPIC: Education Practitioners and Innovators of China is one of the most focused and influential public interest platforms for education in China among top U.S. institutions of higher learning. Our mission is to showcase Stanford's pioneering educational advancements globally through a blend of online and in-person events with an international scope. We prioritize fostering a profound and mutually beneficial relationship between the U.S. and China by facilitating cultural and educational exchanges, thereby contributing to the advancement of global education.

PSC: Public Scholarship Collaborative

The PSC is committed to mobilizing research knowledge to advance equity in education. We provide opportunities for students to work with scholars and experts around the world to write and publish policy briefs, op-eds, and blogs on various pressing concerns in education. Through this process, we support scholars to bring their findings to new audiences; students in working with different mentors and practicing a new genre of writing, and the general public in helping make research more accessible.

Critical AI Pedagogies Cooperative

We aim to foster a joyful multi-disciplinary community to study, contextualize, and question (1) new computational technologies in education and (2) the teaching of computing. Drawing on history, media studies, disability studies, and critical theory, we explore how temporally- and culturally-situated ideas about societal benefit shape and are shaped by technological intervention. We will reflect on our positionality as scholars at an elite university, evaluate the grounding theories and methodologies we employ, and examine the motivations for our research. Care guides our work: by listening to diverse perspectives, questioning narratives of progress and urgency, and contextualizing utopian visions, we express care for our educational interests and the society in which we live. This group aims to produce accessible pedagogical materials and organize opportunities to empower scholars and educators. Knowledge of computer science is neither necessary nor enough to understand this complex sociotechnical system. Please reach out to get involved!

Resilient 1st Gen

Resilient 1st Generation (R1G) is an intentional community-building effort to connect all self-identified first-generation graduate students, staff, faculty and allies within the Graduate School of Education and with other first-generation communities across Stanford. Our group defines first-gen students as the embodiment of intergenerational dreams. Our main goals are to foster a strong sense of belonging for the first-gen community in the GSE, to promote academic collaboration efforts and scholarship that celebrate our unique challenges with a compassionate conscious awareness, and to lay the foundational resources for the first-gen students that will come after us.

The Literacy Collective

The Literacy Collective’s mission is to provide a forum for GSE graduate students currently conducting literacy-related research to engage with each other, faculty members, and the extant community on issues related to literacy. This forum will establish a network of seasoned and emerging scholars drawn together by shared interests to present and receive feedback on current literacy-related research projects during retreats aimed at addressing current and future research. Additionally, we meet to explore the scholarship of literacy experts both in and beyond Stanford during scholar talks and book clubs aimed to foster knowledge of current areas and opportunities for literacy research.

Women of Color Collective

The Women of Color Collective (WoCC) is a student-led initiative that promotes visibility, collaboration, and community for gender marginalized scholars of color. With events ranging from workshops and community building gatherings to invited guest speakers, the WoCC seeks to foster robust academic and collegial exchange. For the past several years, the WoCC has provided a crucial space where culturally and linguistically diverse scholars collectively discuss our milestones and how to develop best practices to enter academia as faculty who value research, teaching, equity, and service.