Meseret F. Hailu awarded NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship

Meseret F. Hailu, assistant professor at ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, has been selected as a 2023 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow.

Hailu is the seventh MLFTC faculty member over the past ten years to be awarded this prestigious fellowship. She joins Carrie Sampson (2021) Juan Carrillo (2015), Claudia Cervantes-Soon (2017), Amanda Tachine (2017), Bryan Henderson (2018) and Keon McGuire (2019).

The award — $70,000 — is intended to assist with salary replacement and research expenses for the fellowship period. This year, 25 fellows were selected from a competitive pool of nearly 200 applicants. The fellowship program includes many of the strongest education researchers in the field today.

Hailu’s research focuses on how institutions of higher education retain minoritized women in STEM pathways. Hailu is exploring two lines of research in 2023 concerning the experiences of undergraduate Black women in different geographic settings: East Africa and the United States. Her primary research agenda investigates how articulations of identity shape educational retention and reflect institutional culture.

“There exists a persistent need to expand research that supports increased diversity in the workforce, and in particular among minoritized women,” said Hailu. “This fellowship will contribute to work being done in this area by identifying and researching promising approaches globally at the K-12 and higher education levels.”

Haiul received her Ph.D. from the Morgridge College of Education at the University of Denver, an M.S. from Regis University, and a B.S./B.A. from the University of Denver. Her work has been published in top-tiered journals, including Comparative Education Review, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, and Research in Higher Education. Additionally, she has received funding from the Fulbright Program, National Science Foundation, and the United States Agency for International Development.

Prior to coming to ASU, Hailu was a postdoctoral research associate at The Ohio State University, where she studied the experiences of women of color faculty in engineering departments. During her doctoral studies, Hailu received a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship award from the U.S. Department of Education, and conducted research in Ethiopia.

Previous MLFTC faculty NAEd/Spencer Fellowship recipients:

Carrie Sampson, assistant professor: Research examines educational equity related to leadership and policy making via school boards, district structures and community advocacy.

Juan Carrillo, associate professor: Research examines the role of agency in historically marginalized communities, with a particular focus on Latinx students. One of his focus areas is on the schooling trajectories of academically successful Latino males who come from working-class origins.

Claudia Cervantes-Soon, associate professor: Research interests center on critical ethnographic approaches to the study of identities, intersectionalities and pedagogical practices, with a particular focus on the fostering of agency, critical literacy and biliteracy, and empowered identities among children, youth and families from marginalized communities.

Amanda Tachine, assistant professor: Researches college and transition, sense of belonging and qualitative methodology, through an Indigenous lens.

Bryan Henderson, associate professor: Research focuses on oral argumentation and learning environments that allow students to feel more comfortable and motivated to talk and interact with one another.

Keon McGuire, associate professor: Research focuses on Black male feminism and gender privilege.