DISSERTATION AWARDS, 2010

Kathleen Elliot, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Kathleen will study the relationship between gender, sexuality, and school culture. Her dissertation project, an ethnography of one U.S. high school, examines how diverse students - both boys and girls, queer and heterosexual - construct and negotiate gender and sexual identities in relation to one another and to the school's institutional practices and policies related to gender and sexuality. This project ultimately aims to inform our understanding of how gender and sexual inequalities are created, performed, resisted, and transformed in contemporary U.S. high schools.

Glenda M. Flores, University of Southern California

Glenda’s dissertation focuses on how Latina teachers, the daughters of Latina working-class women, narrate the process of becoming teachers for racial/ethnic minority schools and describes ensuing race relations and interactions with co-teachers, staff, parents and students in their workplaces. She will employ multiple qualitative methods to answer the following research question: How do upwardly mobile Latina teachers navigate racial/ethnic and class boundaries with students, parents, co-teachers and administrators in multiracial schools?

Roxanne Hughes, Florida State University

Women are currently underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. A prominent policy response to this underrepresentation at the college level is women-only STEM living and learning communities. Roxanne’s dissertation focuses on 26 female college seniors who started college as STEM majors, twelve of whom participated in a STEM living and learning program at a Research 1 University. The life histories of each of these women indicate that positive mentoring, research opportunities, and supportive faculty and peers (including women-only STEM living and learning programs) can help to retain women in historically male-dominated fields. However, the research also indicated that the chilly climate still existed for many of these women.

Kristen Molyneaux, University of Wisconsin-Madison

In the east African country of Uganda, the push for free Universal Secondary Education (USE) has become a driving force for educational change at both the national and local levels. While the policy is touted as "pro-poor", teachers, students, and parents are embroiled in constant debates surrounding the purpose of USE, its commitment to educational access and quality, and the controversial facets of this multi-tiered policy. Kristen’s ethnographic study, which is focused on the impact of USE on one peri-urban community, will investigate the various ways in which gender is both sidelined and mobilized by this national policy in order to create differing arguments in "opposition to" and in "support of" Universal Secondary Education. 

Carly Thomsen, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA

Carly will develop and implement a program class geared toward informing high school seniors and/or first year college students about Women’s Studies concepts while providing a space from which girls and women can develop the leadership skills necessary to effectively engage in social justice activism. She will provide workshops at both the University of Arizona and the University of California to implement her curriculum.

Ellen-Rae Cachola, University of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA\

Ellen-Rae will develop an online visual history map that illustrates the history of militarism in the San Francisco Bay Area, and how gender construction Asia-Pacific.

UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP, 2010

Folasade Scott, Marietta, GA

DISSERTATION AWARDS, 2009

Elizabeth Domangue, Louisiana State University

Many fitness testing programs, including the President's Physical Fitness program, have yet to be investigated though a critical gender lens. The purpose of Elizabeth’s dissertation  is to investigate motivational and gendered aspects of fitness testing, perhaps providing insights into how fitness testing programs covertly and overtly emphasize gender differences.

Erica Nicole Griffin, Arizona State University

Black Women Who Dropped Out: A Personal Perspective is a study of the lives and experiences of Black women who dropped out of high school and are now living and working in the Phoenix Metropolitan area. Erica Nicole Griffin is collecting life stories from eight women between the ages of 24-60 to help inform policymakers, educators and parents about the factors causing these drop outs, and steps that might be taken to prevent this attrition.

Susan Marine, Boston College

The arrival of transgendered students in women's college is the topic investigated by Susan Marine. In her qualitative study of 31 women's college student affairs administrators, she assessed their perceptions of and experiences with transgender (male and genderqueer) students. Most participants (30) reported enacting behaviors that were supportive of transgender students; a small subset (10) reported acting affirmatively on behalf of transgender students and were classified as advocates. Implications for theory, practice, and policy are described.

Judith Obiero, University of Massachusetts

The study examines the educational experiences of poor ethnic minority girls in Kenya. Kenyan Judith Obiero investigates the challenges facing these excluded girls' participation in education by analyzing the ways in which ethnicity. poverty, and other characteristics influence their educational experiences. The study assesses the gender effectiveness of the Free Primary Education Policy and offers recommendations and strategies for reaching and retaining these girls in school.

Elizabeth O'Callaghan, University of Wisconsin

Elizabeth is pursuing an investigation of the glass ceiling in the higher education workforce. Located at the intersection of feminist theory and quantitative research traditions, this study attempts to define the glass ceiling, quantify its effects, and illuminate the ways in which it serves as a barrier to career success for women.

TEACHER AWARD, 2009

Ms. Evelyn Nereida Sweeney and Ms. Gail Tyler,
St. Mary's County, Maryland

The Study Circles program will be implemented in two of the county's schools. The program brings parents and teachers from different racial and ethnic backgrounds together to discuss ways of improving the school and helping students. The program provides tools to celebrate diversity and overcome racial or ethnic barriers.

UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP, 2009

Brittany Bentley, Grand Valley State University

DISSERTATION AWARDS, 2008

Leah Curran, George Washington University

Leah is conducting a critical feminist discourse analysis of federally funded sex education curricula to examine the ways in which discourses of gender and sexuality operate explicitly and implicitly in U.S. sex education programs.  She is comparing abstinence-only and comprehensive sex education curricula to see how discourses of gender and sexuality operate similarly or differently both within and across the alternative types of sex education.   

Howard Glasser, Michigan State University

Amendments to Title IX permit single-sex classes in public schools and this project focused on two single-sex science classes taught by the same teacher in a public, coeducational middle school. Science was investigated because it serves as a gateway to many professional opportunities, but males tend to outperform females in school science, take more science classes, and are more likely to obtain careers in science. This work explores issues of equity between these courses, the history and rationale for the program, and how the classes impact students' performance in school and their development as men and women.

LingLing Yang, Sam Houston State University

The synergistic leadership theory (SLT) is a socially just and gender inclusive theory that addresses the attributes, experiences, and abilities found in both female and male leaders. The purpose of LingLing’s dissertation research is to use the SLT as the theoretical framework to investigate the applicability of the theory to educational leaders in Chinese and American public universities. LingLing believes the findings of her research will have significance to gender equity and social justice that Myra Sadker has promoted. Her study has the potential to improve leadership practice and programs in both Chinese and American universities by including the female leaders' perspectives and experiences and embracing a broader knowledge base of leadership.

HIGH SCHOOL AWARD, 2008

Nicole Vournazos

Nicole is a sophomore at Newtown High School in Connecticut and an active debater. In fact, she was the only female to participate in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in the state of Connecticut the previous year. She received her award to offset the costs of participating in a series of debates during the coming academic year.