Tag: championing

  • Championing Equity in Workforce Development

    Championing Equity in Workforce Development

    Kioshana LaCount Burrell

     At 9:30 p.m., when most working mothers are winding down for the day, Kioshana LaCount Burrell is just getting started. After putting her three children to bed in their Columbus, Ohio home, the 38-year-old Ph.D. student settles into what she calls “The Quiet Hour Critiques” — her dedicated time for scholarship that has earned her recognition as a Rising Graduate Scholar.

    “I get up in the morning, get the kids ready for school, go to work all day, or go to class,” Burrell explains. “Then I come home, I do mom things until about 9 or 9:30, and then once the kids go to sleep, I’m able to focus on scholarship and my studies.”

    This demanding schedule reflects the determination that has defined Burrell’s journey from a small town in Northeast Alabama to the halls of The Ohio State University, where she’s pursuing a doctorate in workforce development with a focus that could reshape how America serves its most vulnerable populations.

    Growing up biracial in Gadsden, Alabama — located in a county of 30,000 people — Burrell witnessed inequality firsthand within her own family. As the oldest of four children with a white mother and Black father, she observed how her grandparents “came from similar backgrounds, but their socioeconomic outcomes were markedly different for what appeared to be no other reason than race.” 

    These early observations planted seeds that would later bloom into a career dedicated to dismantling systemic barriers. After completing her undergraduate degree at Alabama State University and earning her MBA at Faulkner University, Burrell entered the workforce development field in 2014, eventually landing in Columbus through federal contract work. 

    “I’ve been a career coach or doing career development stuff for about 15 years,” she says. But it was her experience working at the Gadsden Job Corps Center—her very first professional role—that crystallized her understanding of systemic inequity.

    Over her 15 years in workforce development, Burrell has traveled the country and encountered the same troubling pattern: programs inadequately modified for neurodivergent participants. This frustration led Burrell to pursue a Ph.D., recognizing that academic credentials would provide the platform and credibility needed to drive systemic change.

    “Some people listen to you a little bit differently when you can show that, no, actually, I am a subject matter expert in this,” she notes pragmatically.

    Her research focuses particularly on neurodivergent individuals of color — a population facing compounded challenges. 

    “We know that in all populations, Black kids and brown kids tend to get the short end of the stick. And when it is compounded by them also having an intellectual cognitive disability or just being different, the outcomes and the numbers are even worse,” she adds. 

    Dr. Donna Y. Ford, a renowned expert in gifted education and multicultural issues and a distinguished professor of education at The Ohio State University, has become a key mentor in Burrell’s academic journey. The two connected when Burrell took Ford’s anti-racist education course last spring. 

    “Kio is a very motivated and impressive student who is dedicated to having a positive impact on those she works with,” Ford observes. “Her commitment reminds me of my own—devoted to equity and justice for all, but especially individuals who have been marginalized.”

    Under Ford’s mentorship, Burrell is working on groundbreaking research that applies Ford’s Bloom-Banks matrix for multicultural education to special education contexts — an application that hasn’t been explored before. “I’m really excited to get to look at her work in a new and different way, and she’s been just super supportive,” Burrell says.

    Pursuing a Ph.D. while working full-time and raising three children requires careful orchestration. Burrell works for Ohio State University — a strategic choice that provides both tuition benefits and the health insurance her family needs. Living with Crohn’s disease adds another layer of complexity to her already demanding schedule.

    Despite starting her Ph.D. program just last year, Burrell is already making impressive progress. She’s on track to finish her coursework within the next year and has already written three chapters of her dissertation — a remarkable pace that speaks to both her dedication and the clarity of her vision.

    Burrell’s post-graduation plans reflect her commitment to institutional change rather than traditional academic paths alone. While she’d “love to be in a classroom” and “really flourish in an educational environment,” her sights are set on administrative roles that could reshape how higher education approaches workforce development. 

    “I really feel there’s a lot of opportunity for institutions of higher education to make a pivot towards a more intentional way of pursuing workforce development,” she explains. Whether as a director of workforce development programs or working within student disability services, her goal is to “figure out how to better incorporate individuals who have cognitive disabilities or intellectual disabilities into the mainstream classroom.”

    For others considering graduate school while juggling family and career responsibilities, Burrell’s advice is characteristically direct: “Just do the thing.”

    Her approach centers on backward planning from a clear vision. 

    “I want you to think about what kind of life you want five years from now, ten years from now,” she tells the students she coaches. “Figure out what it is that you want to do, and then once you have that clear thing in mind, it is easier to figure out the path to get there.” 

     

     

     

     

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  • Championing Teachers in High-Conflict Contexts

    Championing Teachers in High-Conflict Contexts

    Myssan Al Laysy Stouhi

    For Myssan Al Laysy Stouhi, the path to a Ph.D. has been anything but conventional. Born and raised in Lebanon, she has witnessed firsthand the challenges that educators face when teaching becomes an act of resilience rather than routine. Now, as she prepares to graduate this December from Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Composition and Applied Linguistics program, Stouhi is transforming her lived experience into groundbreaking research that amplifies the voices of teachers working in crisis contexts.

    “I always had this interest because, I mean, I’m Lebanese at the end of the day,” Stouhi reflects. “Since I was born, I always lived and worked in a context, in a high conflict context. So, I wanted to do research that would bring more visibility and attention to what things are like for a teacher in Lebanon.”

    Stouhi’s academic journey began at the American University of Beirut, where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in linguistics. After teaching there for several years, she moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2014, spending a decade as a faculty member at the University of Sharjah in Dubai. It was during this time that she began envisioning a doctoral program that would allow her to continue working while pursuing advanced research.

    “I needed a Ph.D. program that was low residency,” she explains. “I spoke to professors at IUP and found scholars there who work on teacher identity, teacher emotions, teacher psychology, and teaching in crisis contexts, which was always my interest.”

    Her timing proved prescient. Between October 2019 and October 2023, Lebanon experienced what Stouhi describes as “probably the darkest period of time that Lebanon witnessed in its modern history.” The country endured a revolution against government corruption, a currency collapse that wiped out 90% of the Lebanese pound’s value, COVID-19 lockdowns, the devastating Beirut port explosion, war threats, and even earthquakes.

    “It was unbelievably bad,” she recalls.

    These concerns became the foundation for her dissertation: “English as an Additional Language (EAL) Teachers Navigate Lebanese Educational System as a Crisis Context: Challenges and Resources.” Through interviews, focus group discussions, autoethnographies, and field artifacts, she spoke with nine teachers to understand how they navigated professional and personal challenges during this unprecedented period.

    “Students’ classes were suspended in Lebanon before the quarantine, because of the revolution,” she notes. “The students weren’t going regularly to school anyway. I wanted to see what their classrooms were like, what resources they were able to draw on, what resources were absent.”

    Her research philosophy extends beyond documenting hardship.

    “Lebanon is not the only crisis context on earth,” she emphasizes. “We live in a globe of crises. Every country is subject to crises, whether it’s a natural disaster, political thing, financial thing. My ultimate goal: what can the international academic community learn from Lebanese teachers about navigating teaching in a very high-conflict context?”

    Dr. Gloria Park, her dissertation advisor, recognizes Stouhi’s unique contribution to the field.

    “Myssan is one of the most resilient and strong doctoral students I have worked with in the past 17 years at Indiana University of Pennsylvania,” Park states. “Yes, the fact that she is in a Ph.D. program in the U.S. is a form of cultural and symbolic capital, yet her continuous teaching while matriculating in a Ph.D. program to send money to her family in Lebanon as well as help the needy teachers who teach in crisis context is a testament of her commitment and desire to give back to her home country.”

    Stouhi’s non-traditional path through graduate school reflects broader changes in higher education. She participated in IUP’s summers-only high residency program, taking intensive coursework during eight-week summer sessions while maintaining her full-time teaching position. This model allowed her to balance family obligations with academic aspirations — a juggling act she began contemplating as early as 2003.

    Looking ahead, Stouhi plans to join the academic job market while pursuing activist work supporting teachers in underrepresented contexts. She’s already connected with colleagues developing capacity-building programs for Middle Eastern educators and is considering additional training in AI skills and educational leadership.

    Her message to prospective graduate students reflects the pragmatic optimism that has carried her through years of balancing crisis and opportunity. “If your dream is to get a Ph.D., then start a Ph.D. and see what it’s like, and then you can decide if this is for you or not. We make things a lot harder in our heads.”

    As Stouhi prepares to defend her dissertation, she remains connected to her Lebanese roots, visiting family annually and maintaining her commitment to educational justice. Through her research, she is working to ensure that the voices of Lebanese teachers — and by extension, educators facing crises globally — will not be forgotten but celebrated as examples of professional courage in the face of unprecedented challenges. 

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  • Green skills, graduate competencies, and championing subject diversity – it’s time to join up some agendas 

    Green skills, graduate competencies, and championing subject diversity – it’s time to join up some agendas 

    Author:
    Rebecca Collins and Santiago Poeira Ribeiro

    Published:

    This HEPI blog was kindly authored by Rebecca Collins, Director, Sustainability and Environment Research and Knowledge Exchange Institute, University of Chester and Santiago Poeira Ribeiro, student in Natural Sciences (Physics), University of Chester. 

    UK universities are currently grappling with a perfect storm of disruptors: financial challenges, ambivalence from national policymakers, and, increasingly, from prospective students as they question what a university education really offers them. At the same time, the employment landscape is weathering its own storms, including those driven by accelerating technological change (particularly AI), concerns about skills deficits, geopolitical turbulence, and equivocation about whether or not this net zero business is here to stay.  UK Government response to these challenges has most recently taken the form of Skills England’s analysis of the skills requirement across ten priority sectors and the promise of a new industrial strategy from 2026-27 that connects these requirements to reforms of the higher education system.  

    It is in this context that a strangely paradoxical scenario is playing out.  On the one hand are claims that the UK does not have the necessary skills for a ‘green transition’ to net zero – what are increasingly being described as ‘green skills’.  (Notwithstanding the current national political ambivalence about net zero, most sectors of the UK economy have long since recognised the necessary direction of travel and know they need an appropriately knowledgeable and skilled workforce to accelerate action.) On the other is a higher education sector beset by the contraction or closure of subject areas perceived by some political and industrial leaders as insufficiently relevant to our collective economic future, ‘green’ or otherwise. However, for many years now, UK higher education has cultivated students’ green skills through its commitment to education for sustainable development (EfSD), widely recognised as essential knowledge for graduates entering the workforce. Indeed, climate literacy training is now often embedded in university curricula, as well as becoming increasingly normalised as a core, if not mandatory, training requirement across a range of industry sectors. Whilst what EfSD looks like at different universities varies, the majority of institutions demonstrate some degree of engagement with this agenda across all subject areas, with some making it a flagship institutional policy.   

    UK higher education thus seems to be quite good already at cultivating green skills for graduates, and across a wide range of subject areas. How, then, does this map onto the very varied definitions of green skills that have emerged from different sectors? The proliferation of reports concerned with this topic has not (yet) resulted in a clear, unified definition. Rather, this tends to be determined by who is doing the defining. Considering the different definitions and concepts prioritised by different institutions, we propose that these intersecting concerns can ultimately be distilled into three main types of green skill: 

    1. Technical skills: particularly those needed to accelerate decarbonisation; concentration of this need in industries such as manufacturing, transportation, utilities and infrastructure.  
    1. Green-enabling skills: otherwise known as soft or transferable skills, including systems thinking, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, adaptability. 
    1. Values-based skills: such as environmental awareness, climate justice, democratic engagement, cultural sensitivity. 

    Whilst definition 1 skews towards STEM subjects (as well as forms of technical expertise developed through other forms of learning, such as apprenticeships or vocational training), definitions 2 and 3 are within the purview of many other subjects commonly studied at undergraduate level, particularly within the arts, humanities and social sciences.   

    It is a timely moment to be reflecting on the relationship between how skills deficit narratives are framed by some corners of industry and government, and how universities position their offer in response. It feels like every academic in UK higher education has a story about recent, current or imminent institution-wide curriculum transformation. Whilst the rationales presented for these varies, one of the stronger narratives concerns ensuring students develop competencies that are fit for the future, respond directly to regional, national or global skills needs, and give students the vocabulary to articulate how the former meets the latter. As such, curriculum transformation presents an opportunity to think about how universities frame their offer, not just to prospective students but equally to the sectors those students might move into as skilled graduates.   

    Further, whilst driven by a range of factors, curriculum transformation presents the opportunity to articulate the role of all subjects studied in higher education, and all types of higher education providers, to contribute to the skills needed for an economy resilient to the socio-political shocks that will inevitably be invoked by environmental crises. There is a role for university leaders to be much bolder in articulating the value of all subjects – STEM and the arts, humanities, social sciences, and everything in between – and the green skills they cultivate. Now is the moment to consider how the promise of higher education might speak to or work with other agendas concerned with ensuring environmentally and socially sustainable and inclusive economies, regionally, nationally and globally. University leaders have a central role to play in advocating for a national higher education system where diversity – of student, skill and subject area – is not just celebrated as a buzzword but is demonstrated to be an essential part of a thriving, resilient and sustainable society.  

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