Gevirtz School Ph.D. candidates, Odelia Simon and Jacob Kirksey, have been awarded with Graduate Dissertation Research Awards from the Chicano Studies Institute (CSI) at UC Santa Barbara. These grants help support the dissertation expenses of doctoral students whose research studies have the potential for adding to our understanding of the Latinx experience in the United States. Past awards have been granted to students in an array of interdisciplinary fields, such as Anthropology, Chicano Studies, Communication, Education, English, Feminist Studies, History, Linguistics, Media Arts, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology.
The Chicano Studies Institute at UC Santa Barbara facilitates interdisciplinary and field-specific research as scholars and students from all disciplines pursue work that helps policy makers, fellow researchers, educators, service providers and the interested public better understand the most pressing issues pertaining to Chicana/o and Latina/o populations. Addressing topics such as community formation, academic achievement, health education, cultural literacy, and math/science proficiency from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, the rich collaborations at the Institute cultivate a better understanding regarding the ways that local, state-wide, national and international forces interact, often times with profound impact.
Odelia Simon is a PhD candidate in the Department of Education who specializes in Policy, Research and Methods with an emphasis in the Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS). Simon’s research interests involve better understanding math identity in middle school students. Her dissertation particularly focuses on establishing a factor model for math identity and using measurement invariance to determine whether math identity is measured equally across genders. Simon has a Masters’ Degree from University of Pennsylvania’s Human Development and Quantitative Methods Program and experience as a Teaching Assistant in the Art History Department at UC Santa Barbara. This role involves the mentoring of a group of diverse UCSB undergraduate students as they participate in community based art at Isla Vista Elementary School where she creates culturally relevant curriculum for undergraduate students to teach the younger students.
Jacob Kirksey is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Education and a graduate research fellow with the National Science Foundation. Drawing from various perspectives and interdisciplinary frameworks in educational policy, Kirksey’s research examines unintended consequences in educational policy and focuses on frequently forgotten student populations (e.g. students with special needs). Trained as an economist, he primarily uses quasi-experimental methods with large, secondary datasets. As an instructor, Kirksey seeks to expand the way in which practitioners and policymakers use and interpret data in their decision-making.
For more information about the Chicano Studies Institute, visit https://www.csi.ucsb.edu/. You can also learn more about the Dissertation Research Award here.