Graduate School of Education
Showing 501-550 of 602 Results
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Sanne Smith
Senior Lecturer of Education
BioSanne Smith is the director of the master’s program in education data science and a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Education.
Her research interests center around the study of social networks and the creation of thriving, diverse contexts. She has studied, for example, why adolescents tend to segregate within schools, how interdisciplinary centers boost scholar productivity and how social capital within neighborhoods offsets ethnic health inequalities. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Social Networks, Research Policy and Social Science Research.
Her teaching includes courses that introduce students to coding, data wrangling and visualization, supervised and unsupervised machine learning (e.g., hierarchical linear modeling, structural equation modeling, factor and principal component analysis), and interpretation of quantitative data.
Prior to directing the GSE master’s program in education data science, she worked as a research scientist at the Center for Population Health Sciences at Stanford and carried out national survey collection for the Children for Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries in the Netherlands. -
Olatunde Sobomehin
Adjunct Lecturer, GSE Faculty Affairs
BioOlatunde Sobomehin is the 2025 Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. As a student at Stanford from 1998 to 2003, he held leadership positions in Alpha Phi Alpha, Nu Sigma Chapter, the NAACP, and STeP Up (Students using Technology to Empower People for United Progress), a student group he founded. He also led a public speaking course in the School of Engineering and competed on Stanford’s Top-25 Men’s Basketball team, where he was voted Most Inspirational Player (2003). Since graduating, he has taught courses through the Stanford Haas Center for Public Service and the Stanford d.school, where he also co-authored the book Creative Hustle with sam seidel.
In 2014, Olatunde co-founded StreetCode Academy, an East Palo Alto–based nonprofit that offers free technology education to communities of color. Under his leadership, StreetCode has become a national model for community-based innovation, serving more than 3,000 students annually and delivering over 50,000 hours of free instruction. His body of work has earned him recognition as a 2018 Aspen Institute Scholar, a 2019 Praxis Fellow, and a 2020 Social Entrepreneurship Fellow at Stanford University.
Most recently, he has delivered academic presentations at two international conferences: the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) Conference in Finland and the ACM Global Computing Education Conference in Botswana, where he shared hands-on strategies for advancing the social and societal impacts of computing. He frequently speaks on community-centered innovation, equity in technology education, and creative leadership, and has served as a guest lecturer in courses across engineering, education, and design.
Olatunde and his wife, Tamara, reside in East Palo Alto, CA, and are the blessed parents of four children: Olatayo and Temilola, students at Stanford University; Tatiola, a freshman at USC; and Olataiye, an eighth grader. -
Tamara Nicole Sobomehin
Teaching Asst-Graduate, LDT Learning, Design and Technology
BioTamara Nicole Sobomehin is a PhD student at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, specializing in Learning Sciences and Technology Design and Curriculum Studies & Teacher Education (Science, Engineering, and Technology), with a PhD minor in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Alongside her four amazing children and her husband, Olatunde, she centers the principles of Love and Ujima to embody the commitment to collective work and responsibility required to advance social sustainability and restorative community and school design. Her research examines joyful learning, positive design, equity in Ed|TECH|Edu, and community-rooted learning initiatives to generate scholarship and technologies that advance a praxis of care, connectedness, and creativity.
Tamara is passionate about empowering children by designing meaningful experiences that foster agentic engagement and creative confidence in their learning. She is president of the Ravenswood City School District Board of Trustees, serving her second term as an elected school board member (2018-2022; 2022-2026), and is a co-founder and the Chief Education Officer at StreetCode Academy, an award-winning tech education organization with a mission to empower communities of color with the mindsets, skills, and access to participate in the innovation ecosystem. At StreetCode Academy, Tamara creates and supervises all learning initiatives, helping community members develop creative confidence and technical skills in coding, entrepreneurship, and design.
Tamara holds a BA in Psychology and an MA in Sociology from Stanford University, and an MEd in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Texas at Arlington. -
Guillermo Solano-Flores
Professor of Education
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCurrent research projects examine academic language and testing, formative assessment practices for culturally diverse science classrooms, and the design and use of illustrations in international test comparisons and in the testing of English language learners.
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Mitchell L. Stevens
Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of Sociology
BioI am an organizational sociologist with longstanding interests in educational sequences, lifelong learning, alternative educational forms, and the formal organization of knowledge. At Stanford I convene the Pathways Network (pathways.stanford.edu) and the Futures Project on Education and the Learning Society (learningsociety.io).
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Deborah Stipek
Judy Koch Professor of Education, Emerita
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEarly childhood education (instruction and policy), math education for young children
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Myra Strober
Professor of Education, Emerita
BioMyra Strober is a labor economist and Professor Emerita at the School of Education at Stanford University. She is also Professor of Economics at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University (by courtesy). Myra’s research and consulting focus on gender issues at the workplace, work and family, and multidisciplinarity in higher education. She is the author of numerous articles on occupational segregation, women in the professions and management, the economics of childcare, feminist economics and the teaching of economics. Myra’s most recent book is a memoir, Sharing the Work: What My Family and Career Taught Me About Breaking Through (and Holding the Door Open for Others) 2016). She is also co-author, with Agnes Chan, of The Road Winds Uphill All the Way: Gender, Work, and Family in the United States and Japan (1999).
Myra is currently teaching a course on work and family at the Graduate School of Business.
Myra was the founding director of the Stanford Center for Research on Women (now the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research). She was also the first chair of the National Council for Research on Women, a consortium of about 65 U.S. centers for research on women. Now the Council has more than 100 member centers. Myra was President of the International Association for Feminist Economics, and Vice President of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (now Legal Momentum). She was an associate editor of Feminist Economics and a member of the Board of Trustees of Mills College.
Myra has consulted with several corporations on improved utilization of women in management and on work-family issues. She has also been an expert witness in cases involving the valuation of work in the home, sex discrimination, and sexual harassment.
At the School of Education, Myra was Director of the Joint Degree Program, a master’s program in which students receive both an MA in education and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business. She also served as the Chair of the Program in Administration and Policy Analysis, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and Acting Dean. Myra was on leave from Stanford for two years as the Program Officer in Higher Education at Atlantic Philanthropic Services (now Atlantic Philanthropies).
Myra holds a BS degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University, an MA in economics from Tufts University, and a Ph.D. in economics from MIT. -
Hariharan Subramonyam
Assistant Professor (Research) of Education
BioHari Subramonyam is an Assistant Professor (Research) at the Graduate School of Education and a Faculty Fellow at Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered AI. He is also a member of the HCI Group at Stanford. His research focuses on augmenting critical human tasks (such as learning, creativity, and sensemaking) with AI by incorporating principles from cognitive psychology. He also investigates support tools for multidisciplinary teams to co-design AI experiences. His work has received multiple best paper awards at top human-computer interaction conferences, including CHI and IUI.
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Megumi E. Takada
Ph.D. Student in Education, admitted Autumn 2021
Graduate Program Assistant, Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP)BioMegumi Takada is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Her research centers around children’s literacy experiences in the elementary school years, with a special interest in designing literacy instruction that promotes student agency and school belonging. Her most recent work focuses on translingual and multimodal writing, working with elementary school teachers to co-design writing instruction that leverages multilingual students' everyday language and literacy practices. Her work is driven by her former experience as a public school teacher in South Korea and Seattle, as well as her transnational, translingual experiences growing up cross-culturally in California and Japan. She is a recipient of the Fulbright teaching fellowship and graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in neuroscience and elementary teaching credentials.
スタンフォード大学教育学部で博士課程の研究を進めています。研究は主に小学生の読み書き・バイリンガル教育についてです。デザイン思考を取り入れて近所の公立小学校と連携しながら研究をしています。読み書きの授業に生徒達のアイデンティティ・言語・文化などを取り込んで、子どもたちにとって学校が居心地の良い場所、興味を持って楽しく勉強できる場所にしていこうと思っています。スタンフォード大学入学前は韓国で英語の先生として働き、その後はシアトルの公立小学校で１年生の担任をしていました。主にアメリカで生まれ育ちましたが、高校の間は関西で過ごしました。今後もこのような研究を通して、バイリンガル・マルチリンガルの子ども達、日本とアメリカを行き来する子ども達を支援できたらと思っています。 -
Guicheng "Ariel" Tan
Contingent Otp 1,
BioGuicheng “Ariel” Tan is a Ph.D. student and presidential scholar at Harvard Graduate School of Education, with a concentration in Human Development, Learning, and Teaching. Under Dr. Adriana Umaña-Taylor, she is the data manager of the Adolescent Ethnic-Racial Identity Development Laboratory. As a researcher, Ariel is interested in how people process and integrate different cultures during a cohesive sense of self, with a specific focus on the role of cognitive flexibility in this identity development process. Outside of research, Ariel has over 6 years of experience in student affairs implementing residential education programs, leading assessment and DEI efforts, overseeing crisis management, and training student leaders at different universities. Ariel received her B.S. in Psychology with Distinctions from the University of California, San Diego in 2015 and her M.A. in Higher Education and Student Affairs from New York University in 2019.
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Jessamy Tang
Managing Director, Stanford Down Syndrome Research Center, Lemons Program
BioJessamy Tang is the Managing Director of the Stanford Down Syndrome Research Center. She is also a Board Trustee of Down Syndrome International, Board Director of Disability Rights Legal Center, Chairperson of the World Down Syndrome Day Conference at the United Nations and Co-Founder of The Matthew Foundation.
Prior to joining the Down Syndrome Research Center, Ms. Tang accumulated over thirty years of experience as an advocate for the developmental disability community, entrepreneur, executive with The Walt Disney Company, and board member of US and international non-profit organizations. At The Walt Disney Company, she worked across multiple operating units at ESPN and ABC Radio. While she was at ESPN Enterprises, their business development unit, she negotiated several “first” technology partnerships for ESPN. She developed the business plan for and led the expansion of ESPN Radio by ensuring 24/7 programming, purchasing owned & operated stations, affiliating ESPN branded radio stations and creating a full marketing plan. She then became President of the ABC-owned Pittsburgh radio stations where her stations earned four (4) Achievement in Radio awards, Sports Personality of the Year award, and achieved the highest ratings among all ESPN Radio stations nationwide. Following her corporate success, she then independently acquired two radio stations through private equity funding and affiliated them with ESPN thus becoming the first minority woman founder and CEO of a sports radio business.
Outside of her corporate roles, Ms. Tang served with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service and Visiting Committee for the MIT Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation. She has also advised an NFL team, a leading international media company, and has spoken at numerous sports, media, and entertainment conferences.
Ms. Tang received her Bachelor of Science degree from MIT and MBA from Stanford University. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two children including her son who has Down syndrome. -
Rebecca Tarlau
Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education
BioRebecca Tarlau is Associate Professor of Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education. Dr. Tarlau was formerly Associate Professor of Education and of Labor and Employment Relations at the Pennsylvania State University, where she was the co-founder of the Penn State Consortium for Social Movements and Education Research and Practice. Her ethnographic research agenda has four broad areas of focus: (1) theories of the state and state-society relations; (2) social movements and popular education, labor education, and critical pedagogy; (3) Latin American education and development; and (4) teachers’ unions, teacher activism, and teachers’ work.
Dr. Tarlau is the author of the award-winning Occupying School, Occupying Land: How the Landless Workers Movement Transformed Brazilian Education (2019, Oxford University Press, published in Portuguese in 2023 by Expressão Popular), which analyzes how a large grassroots social movement has linked education reform to its vision for agrarian reform by developing pedagogical practices for schools that foster activism, direct democracy, and collective forms of work. Contrary to the belief that social movements cannot engage the state without demobilizing, Tarlau shows how educational institutions can help movements recruit new activists, diversify their membership, increase technical knowledge, and garner political power. Dr. Tarlau’s forthcoming book Teacher Organizing Across the Americas: Diverse Strategies for Transforming Unions, Schools and Societies (Oxford University Press) explores why teachers’ unions in Brazil, Mexico, and the United States have embraced radically different strategies, and the important role of internal oppositional movements in transforming the goals and strategies of labor unions. Currently Dr. Tarlau is involved in a multi-country comparative study analyzing the impact of sustainable agriculture education on agroecological knowledge and landscape change in Latin America. -
Reuben Thiessen
Project Manager - IT, SAL Digital Learning
Current Role at StanfordI'm responsible for supporting technical projects emerging from Stanford Accelerator for Learning initiatives such as AI+Education and Virtual Field Trips. I work closely with the Director of Digital Learning Solutions as well as a team of technologists and researchers, fostering innovative solutions between subject matter experts and a team of support staff.
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Candace Thille
Associate Professor (Teaching) of Education
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCIF21 DIBBs: Building a Scalable Infrastructure for Data-Driven Discovery and Innovation in Education: Funded by the National Science Foundation.
In collaboration with Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and the University of Memphis, we are creating a community software infrastructure, called LearnSphere, which supports sharing, analysis, and collaboration across a wide variety of educational data. LearnSphere supports researchers as they improve their understanding of human learning. It also helps course developers and instructors improve teaching and learning through data-driven course redesign.
The Learning Engineering Initiative: EdHub. Funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative/Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
The EdHub project is a cross-sector initiative, to engineer the creation of a novel research and development hub in the Bay Area that is designed to integrate, by design, ongoing research in the Learning Sciences with ongoing approaches to enduring problems of practice within education.
Adaptable Learning Feedback for Instructors: The Open Analytics Research System (OARS). Funded by the Stanford VPTL Innovation Grant.
The activities and embedded assessments in online courseware provide support to students and generate fine-grained student learning data. The Open Analytic Research System (OARS) collects and models student learning data and and presents information to instructors in a dashboard to guide instruction and class activities.
Next Generation Courseware Challenge: A Partnership for Iterative Excellence in Online Courseware for College Learners. Funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The OLI statistics courseware was created as an open educational resource (OER) on, the now proprietary, CMU OLI platform. In moving to Stanford, I moved the courseware to Lagunita, Stanford’s OpenEdx platform so that it would once again be an OER and extended the capabilities of the Lagunita platform to support the OLI statistics course. In collaboration with multiple partner institutions, we have continued to expand and update the courseware and conducted several learning studies. We have conducted studies in "Mindset" with Carol Dweck's (Stanford Psychology) PERTS group. In collaboration with Emma Brunskill (Stanford Computer Science), we are implementing an adaptive problem solver that uses Bayesian optimization algorithms to automatically identify which items to include in a practice set, and how to adaptively select these items in order to maximize student performance on the specified set of learning objectives and skills. Additional RCT studies that we are currently conducting in the OLI statistics courseware at our partner institutions include a study on the impact of prompting and scaffolding learners to make strategic choices about their use of course resources; and a separate study that builds affect detectors into the courseware to test the impact of timing interventions to the affective as well as cognitive state of the learner. -
Thalia Tom
Postdoctoral Scholar, Education
BioThalia Tom is an Equity in Early Education Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University. Her research uses quantitative methods to examine inequality in neighborhoods and schools, with a particular focus on residential and school segregation and racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in educational outcomes. Thalia’s research has been supported by grants from the American Sociological Association and the Russell Sage Foundation. Prior to joining Stanford, Thalia earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Southern California.
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Thong Minh Trinh
Graduate, Graduate School of Education
BioThong Minh Trinh is an Exchange Scholar at Stanford University and a Berkeley Fellow and PhD student in Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a quantitative higher education policy scholar whose research centers on higher education finance, particularly student loans and financial aid. Using quasi-experimental designs and other quantitative methods, he examines how financing policies shape student borrowing, college choices, educational opportunity, and student outcomes in the United States and internationally.
Thong’s scholarship spans higher education systems in the United States, Vietnam, and South Korea. His peer-reviewed research has appeared in Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, the British Educational Research Journal, and Asian Education and Development Studies, covering transitions to higher education, institutional financial sustainability, student finance, and educational opportunity. He also contributes to public and policy conversations on college affordability, student loans, income-share agreements, and the trade-offs among tuition, quality, and access.
At UC Berkeley, Thong has taught in the Departments of Statistics and Political Science, teaching applied quantitative analysis and advanced programming in R. His research experience includes evaluating an NSF-funded graduate training initiative at the Berkeley School of Public Health, contributing to research on student debt and admissions policy at the Berkeley School of Education, and supporting higher education policy analysis through a legislative fellowship with the Office of Illinois State Senator Chapin Rose.
Prior to Berkeley, Thong earned an EdM in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he was an Edwin J. O’Leary Fellow and received the Illinois International Graduate Achievement Award. He also holds an MSc in Business Analysis and Consulting from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, where he received the Strathclyde Business School Dean’s Excellence Scholarship, and a BSc in International Business from the Banking Academy of Vietnam, graduating with distinction.
Thong is active in the higher education research community as an editorial board member for the Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education, the Journal of Student Financial Aid, and the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice. He also regularly reviews for leading journals and conferences, including AERA, ASHE, AEFP, and CIES. His academic work has earned honors and fellowships, including the Berkeley Fellowship, Illinois International Graduate Achievement Award, and the ICPSR Education Research Scholarship.
More information is available at https://thongminhtrinh.com -
Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor
Professor of Education
BioAdriana J. Umaña-Taylor, Ph.D. is a Professor of Adolescent Development in the Graduate School of Education. In her work, Dr. Umaña-Taylor seeks to apply developmental science in a manner that reduces disparities in psychological and academic adjustment and, in turn, promotes social justice. Her research is guided by socio-cultural ecological theories of development, developmental prevention science, and risk and resilience frameworks. She has collaborated with school districts and community organizations for over two decades to design and implement longitudinal, school- and community-based studies to better understand the experiences of adolescents and their families. Dr. Umaña-Taylor developed the Identity Project, a school-based curriculum that engages adolescents in the developmental process of ethnic-racial identity formation. Her recent studies test the efficacy and effectiveness of the Identity Project; explore strategies to better prepare educators to engage in conversations about race, ethnicity, and identity with students; examine the role of peer relationships in adolescents’ ethnic-racial identity development; and explore the universality of ethnic-racial-cultural identity as a developmental competency among adolescents in North America, Europe, and the Global South to support building a more global developmental science.
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Brenda Valdes
Ph.D. Student in Education, admitted Autumn 2024
Graduate Program Assistant, Domingue Program
Research Asst - Graduate (Gardner Center), John Gardner Center
Research Assistant, Padilla ProgramCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsBrenda is a developmental Psychologist specializing in longitudinal quantitative methods to study variation in learning and language development. Her research examines how individual and contextual factors shape students’ developmental trajectories across time, with an emphasis on patterns in academic growth.
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Guadalupe Valdés
Bonnie Katz Tenenbaum Professor of Education, Emerita
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsValdés is the Founder and Executive Director of "English Together" a 501(c)(3) organization. The organization creates rich connections between ordinary speakers of English and low-wage, immigrant workers by preparing volunteers to provide one-on-one “coaching” in workplace English.
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Maria Del Socorro Velazquez
Social Science Research Scholar, Research Staff - Other
Casual - Non-Exempt, Brown Program
Staff, Brown ProgramBioMaria is Stanford Provostial Fellow/Academic Staff Researcher in the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Her research examines housing, educational opportunity, educational policy, and place. She draws on qualitative methods and uses an interdisciplinary framework to draw attention to the socially constructed nature of inequities in schools and school communities. Relatedly, her work considers the efforts parents, educators, and community members take to contest and disrupt inequities in schools and school communities towards creating transformative opportunities for youth.
Maria’s collaborative research and publications contribute to scholars’ and educational leaders’ understanding of the housing-school nexus, school-prison nexus, and school organizational policies and practices that contribute to categorical inequalities. Maria holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a B.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. -
Daniel Verdi
Ph.D. Student in Education, admitted Autumn 2025
BioComputational Social Science • Social Computing • Science of Science • Natural Language Processing • Responsible AI
I apply data science methods, mainly natural language processing (NLP) and social network analysis, to evaluate the communication and governance of science and technology. A focus of my work is how academic knowledge is translated across audiences, amplified or distorted through digital media, and taken up in political debate.
My research is particularly concerned with how algorithmic systems like AI and social media are changing information ecosystems and how their own risks and benefits are transmitted to the public. At the core of my work is a commitment to questions of equity, ethics, and social justice.
Beyond conducting science, I am also passionate about designing tools and events to put it in conversation with communities and create opportunities for marginalized students to engage with research and technology. I’m especially interested in improving digital and AI literacies, as well as in using AI and other technologies in informal education.
Before Stanford, I graduated from the University of Richmond as a Richmond Scholar, the institution's most prestigious and competitive academic award. Additionally, I have conducted research at universities such as Carnegie Mellon, University of Southern Califronia, and University of Copenhagen, and interned at Amazon Alexa AI. I’m also proud to have co-founded one of Brazil's largest high school science fairs, the Brazilian Fair of Young Scientists (FBJC), which has engaged over 2,000 participants and received over 1M website visits. -
Seth Walker
Postdoctoral Scholar, Education
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI study how education policies and financial incentives shape educational access, student success, and early-career outcomes. My research uses large-scale administrative data and applied quantitative methods to examine financial aid, teacher labor markets, advanced learning opportunities, and educational policy design. I am broadly interested in how evidence-based policies and reforms can expand educational opportunity and support student success throughout the educational pipeline.
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Brian A. Wandell
Isaac and Madeline Stein Family Professor and Professor, by courtesy, of Electrical Engineering, of Ophthalmology and of Education
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsModels and measures of the human visual system. The brain pathways essential for reading development. Diffusion tensor imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging and computational modeling of visual perception and brain processes. Image systems simulations of optics and sensors and image processing. Data and computation management for reproducible research.
