RILE Fall Conference 2022

Dr. Patricia Martínez Álvarez is an associate professor in the program in Bilingual/Bicultural Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research exposes the educational inequities that bilingual children with a disability experience and aims at preparing teachers for inclusive bilingual programs. She is the author of the book Teacher Education for Inclusive Bilingual Contexts.

Dr. Eddie Commeaux is a professor and founding executive director of the Center for Athletes’ Rights and Equity (CARE) at UC Riverside, where racial equity and policy issues in higher education are central to his work. Comeaux has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and other academic publications and reports. He has also published five books, including College Athletes’ Rights and Well-Being: Critical Perspectives on Policy and Practice (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), and has consulted with a variety of for-profit and non-profit organizations on equity and diversity strategies. Comeaux’s work has been featured or quoted in the Wall Street Journal, NPR, HuffPost, Forbes, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, and many other outlets. For his scholarly work, in April 2019 he received the Outstanding Contribution Award from AERA’s Research Focus on Education and Sport Special Interest Group (SIG). The year prior, in April 2018, he received the Dr. Carlos J. Vallejo Memorial Award for Exemplary Scholarship from AERA’s Multicultural/Multiethnic Education SIG. Prior to earning his PhD he was drafted out of the University of California, Berkeley, in the amateur free draft by the Texas Rangers baseball organization and spent four years playing professionally.

Session 1 | 3:00pm PT

RILE Talks: Emerging Research from Graduating RILE Students

Jessica Stovall is a doctoral candidate in the Race, Inequality, and Language in Education (RILE) and Curriculum and Teacher Education (CTE) programs. She holds a BS in secondary education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MS in literature from Northwestern University. Her current research draws on Black Studies to explore how Black teachers create fugitive spaces to navigate and combat antiblackness at their school sites. Jessica’s research has been supported by fellowships including the Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching grant, the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, and the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship. Before beginning her doctoral studies at Stanford, Jessica taught English and reading for 11 years in the Chicagoland area.

Brian Cabral (he/él) is a Chicagoan, sociologist, and PhD candidate in the Race, Inequality, and Language in Education (RILE) program. His research focuses on the interplay between race, place, language, and carcerality. His dissertation is centered on the schooling and educative geographies of racialized youth in reentry efforts across the Bay Area.

Victoria Melgarejo Is a doctoral candidate in the Race, Inequality, and Language in Education program. Her research interests include raciolinguistic ideologies and the educational experiences of Latinx students. Her current research focuses on the classification of Latinx students of Spanish-speaking heritage as long-term English learners.  

Session 2 | 3:45pm PT

Book Launch: The Fight For Black History in Schools

Dr. Michael Hines is a historian of education and assistant professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He earned his BA in history from Washington University in St. Louis, and his MA and PhD in Cultural and Educational Policy Studies from Loyola University Chicago. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in history and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Prior to pursuing graduate studies, Dr. Hines worked as an ELA and world history teacher in Washington, D.C., and Prince George's County, Maryland. Currently his research focuses on how African Americans in the early twentieth century created new curricular discourses around race and historical representation. His work has been published in popular outlets such as ChalkBeat, TIME, and the Washington Post, along with scholarly publications including the Journal of African American History, Review of Educational Research, History of Education Quarterly, and the Journal of the History Childhood and Youth. His first book, A Worthy Piece of Work, from Beacon Press, was released in May.

Session 3 | 5:00pm PT

Research Matters

Dr. Ruth López Turley directs the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, which brings together data, research, engagement, and action to improve lives. In 2011, she founded the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC), a research-practice partnership between Rice University and eleven Houston area school districts, representing over 700,000 students. A program of the Kinder Institute, HERC works to improve educational equity by connecting research to policy and practice, working directly with district leaders. She directed HERC from 2011 to 2022, during which time she raised over $30M so that school districts would not have to pay for research. She also founded the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships, which connects and supports over 60 partnerships between research institutions and education agencies throughout the country. She is a graduate of Stanford and Harvard and is originally from Laredo, Texas.