Three doctoral students at Stanford Graduate School of Education have been selected for the 13th cohort of the Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence (DARE) Doctoral Fellowship Program.

The program, established in 2008, prepares students from diverse backgrounds to pursue and succeed in academic careers. Recipients are awarded during the last two years of their PhD program. There are currently more than 150 alumni of the program who have successfully launched careers in academia, industry and government.

Provost Persis Drell and Vice Provost for Graduate Education Stacey Bent formally recognized the fellows at an online reception on Tuesday, Oct. 6.

The following GSE students have been awarded 2020-22 DARE fellowships: 

AJ Alvero studies data science, inequality/inequity in education, and sociolinguistics at the GSE. He co-founded the Student Narrative Lab, where he collaborates with his advisor, Mitchell Stevens, as well as anthony antonio and Ben Domingue. AJ’s work has appeared in conferences and publications such as Educational Data Mining, American Sociological Association, and AI, Ethics, and Society. His dissertation studies sociolinguistic variation in college admissions essays written by Latinx students using computational and qualitative methods. Prior to Stanford, AJ was a high school teacher and studied at the University of Miami and Florida International University.

Rosa Chavez is studying mathematics education. Her doctoral research focuses on how classroom practices shape learning opportunities for elementary students, and how Latinx students take up those opportunities to see themselves as mathematics learners. Before attending Stanford, she taught mathematics in South Texas. She is an Institute for Education Sciences (IES) Fellow and holds a BA in Mass Communication and an MS in Mathematical Sciences from the University of Texas Pan-American. At Stanford, she cofounded the Women of Color Collective at the GSE and leads the IES-Pathways partnership between the GSE and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Sandra Habtamu taught high school language arts and history in Philadelphia’s public schools for a decade prior to her doctoral studies at Stanford. Her dissertation will be a history of education study of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School. While at Stanford, Sandra also earned a MA in African history and studied Amharic. She holds a BA from Lafayette College and a MSEd from the University of Pennsylvania. Outside of academia, Sandra is a deaconess and worship leader at the University AME Zion Church, and she loves to cook, dance and practice yoga.

See the full list of 2020-22 DARE fellows from the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education.