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June 2007 > School News
Spencer Fellows Kenzo Sung, Cecilia Lucas, center,
Spencer Fellows Celebrate as Program Heads into Last Year
and Nirali Hani, right, chat at a year-end gathering.
One wouldn’t know that time is running out on the Spencer Fellowship Institutional Research Training by talking to the current crop of Spencer Fellows.“It's been an amazing experience,” says Darrell Earnest, a second year doctoral candidate in Cognition and Development. “Working one-on-one with Judith [Warren Little] and other GSE students and faculty has pushed me to think deeply, and further develop my own research methods.”
That is precisely what the $10,000, one-time fellowship awards were supposed to do when they were instituted nine years ago. The last year of the Phase II five-year grant program will be 2007-08. Spencer Fellows design and conduct independent research projects during their fellowship year, but also receive support and mentoring from faculty and peers in a series of special activities.
For Alona Roded, a second-year School Psychology Ph.D. candidate, it all began when the Spencer Fellows and GSE faculty members held their three-day retreat at the Marconi Conference Center on Tomales Bay.
“It’s a special opportunity to meet and talk with students and faculty in other [academic] areas,” says Roded. “Students in other areas are more involved with politics, society and culture, so they challenge my assumptions and offer different views and perspectives.”
Nirali Jani, a third-year Social and Cultural Studies doctoral candidate, says that the program gave her the impetus to keep going with her research on Reading First and other literacy initiatives.
Roded also idled for a period, too, but says she “learned that other students and professors get stuck too. It’s only a phase.”
In addition to a three-day research retreat, students come together for a mini-retreat to share progress at mid-year and also affiliate with one of several mentoring groups available in the School of Education.
Warren Little, who serves as faculty coordinator for the program, credits it with showing the importance of venues where students can develop and receive feedback on their own evolving research.
“Participation in CISTL [The Center for the Integrated Study of Teaching and Learning] renewed my enthusiasm in scientific inquiry,” says Liz Hartman, a doctoral student in the Joint Doctoral Program in Special Education. “I learned a great deal from seeing my peers’ research projects develop over the course of the year and having their monthly feedback on my project was invaluable.”
More than 100 former Spencer Fellows have gone on to take faculty positions in a wide range of universities, colleges and research organizations.
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