Congratulations to our spring 2018 PhD graduates!

The doctor of philosophy degree was conferred on eight graduates of Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at the spring convocation ceremony on May 11. The college offers two PhD programs, in Educational Policy and Evaluation; and Learning, Literacies and Technologies.

Professor Sherman Dorn, director of the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation, oversees PhD programs for the college. He says, "These new doctors of philosophy have completed original research under faculty supervision. That means that to earn their doctorates, they have to generate new knowledge about education — that means new knowledge about how humans learn, how our education systems are organized and how we can improve education. Our doctoral graduates have published with faculty, have invented and studied new programs, and are headed to new jobs and new challenges," Dorn says.

Here are the 2018 PhD graduates and their dissertation topics, with links to their dissertations on ProQuest.

Earl Aguilera (Learning, Literacies and Technologies) — Assistant Professor of Secondary Curriculum and Instructional Technology, Fresno State University: "Analyzing Digital Literacy Demands, Practices, and Discourses Within a Library Computer Programming Club for Children"

Evelyn Baca (Educational Policy and Evaluation) — Assistant Professor, Bucknell University (Lewisburg, Pennsylvania): "Exploring the Intersections of Local Language Policies and Emergent Bilingual Learner Identities: A Comparative Classroom Study at an Urban Arizona School"

Danielle Kachorsky (LLT) — Assistant Professor of Literacy, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Learning Sciences: "I am not Prometheus: Traditional Literacy and Multimodal Texts in Secondary Classrooms"

Laura Kelly (LLT) — Assistant Professor of Elementary Literacy, Rhodes College (Memphis): "The Role of Text Difficulty in Small-Group Reading for Bilingual Students"

Jameson Lopez (EPE) — Assistant Professor of Higher Education, University of Arizona (Tucson): "To Help Others Like Me Quechan and Cocopah Postsecondary Persistence for Nation-Building"

Priyanka Parekh (LLT) — Assistant Professor of Education, Transylvania University (Lexington, Kentucky): "Summer of Tinkering: Sociocultural Views of Children's Learning while Tinkering in Social and Material Worlds"

Catharyn Shelton (LLT) — Assistant Professor of Educational Technology, California State University–Stanislaus: "Online Teacherpreneurship: Shedding Light on the Practice, the Individuals Who Pursue It, and the Impacts They Experience"

Kelly Tran (LLT) — Assistant Professor of Game and Interactive Media Design, High Point University (High Point, North Carolina): "Distributed Teaching and Learning in Pokémon Go"