Doctoral Robing: A New SESP Tradition
Seven new PhDs were honored and gifted regalia during a special robing ceremony prior to the 2024 convocation celebration as part of a tradition at Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy
Our newest doctors include Xiao (Angel) Bohannon, Jennifer Cowhy, Mario Guerra, Stephanie T. Jones, Claire Mackevicius, Jessica Marshall, and Carolyn Swen. All seven are invited to return to the 2025 convocation ceremonies, said School of Education and Social Policy Dean Bryan Brayboy, who congratulated the students before advisors spoke about their work and presented their purple gowns.
“I hope you dream so big it scares you and you live lives worthy of those dreams,” Brayboy said. “We don’t empower you; we help you unlock power you already have.”
The School of Education and Social Policy's three pioneering doctoral programs—Human Development and Social Policy, Learning Sciences, and the joint Learning Science and Computer Science program—were the first of their kind in the nation and inspired many imitators.
- Human Development and Social Policy students research how policy affects people and how people affect policies -- and the implication for well-being across the lifespan.
- Learning Sciences weaves together cognition, social context and design. Cognitive science was in its infancy in 1991 when learning sciences started as an interdisciplinary doctoral program for the scientific understanding learning and the design of innovations for education.
- The joint PhD Program in Computer Science and Learning Sciences builds on enduring and growing connections between research on learning and computation. These students study how rapid technological advances create new ays to both understand and support learning in all settings and in all stages of life.
Learn more about each of our students:
Doctor of Philosophy in Human Development and Social Policy
Xiao (Angel) Bohannon
Dissertation title: “Attending to School Leadership Attention”
Advisor: Cynthia Coburn, Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence
Committee: Cynthia Coburn (chair); Simone, lspa-Landa, associate professor of human development and social policy, James Spillane, the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Professor in Learning and Organizational Change; William Penuel, Distinguished Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder
A major pivot: Bohannon was nearly done with her first dissertation proposal March of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic upended her research. But Bohannon quickly regrouped and began pursuing a second timely topic: school leadership during times of crisis.
Key finding: Demands on school leaders have intensified in the past few decades amidst the standards-based accountability movement and the COVID pandemic. The deluge of responsibility affects their mental, physical and emotional health, something policymakers and funders should consider. Bohannon also highlights the taken-for-granted, often invisible, actions that school leaders use to filter and sort through multiple demands to get to instruction in the first place. “Simply put, paying attention took effort, and it took a lot of it,” she wrote.
Quoted: Bohannan is “curious, interested in and passionate about so many issues related to public schools,” said advisor Cynthia Coburn. “She is intellectually flexible and thinks about social problems in a variety of ways, using a range of theories and approaches. She cares deeply about doing work that matters.”
Special honors: Bohannon received an AAUW American Fellowship and a Northwestern Graduate Research Grant.
Next stop: Bohannon is a research scientist with NORC and a research fellow with Chicago Public Schools.
Jennifer R. Cowhy
Dissertation title: “Why Do We Have to Fight So Hard? Examining the Role of Parents as Policy Agents within Special Education”
Related publication: Reconceptualizing Parents as Policy Agents Within Special Education, coauthored by Quinn Mulroy and Tabitha Bonilla
Advisors: Cynthia Coburn and Simone Ispa-Landa, associate professor of human development and social policy
Committee: Coburn (chair); Ispa-Landa' Quinn Mulroy, assistant professor of human development and social policy; James Spillane
Her topic: Cowhy investigated how special education policy addresses discrimination. In addition to identifying policy strengths and weaknesses, she looked at parents’ roles in equitable and appropriate education for their kids, and the ways school districts and schools and organizations help and thwart efforts.
Quoted: “Jen is a true inter-disciplinary scholar, drawing together theories and research from sociology and political science and developing modes of analysis and findings that have the potential to take her field to the next level,” Coburn said. “Importantly, deep empathy is at the core of Jen’s scholarship.”
Next stop: Assistant professor of education leadership at the University of Arkansas College of Education and Health Professions.
Claire Lambert Mackevicius
Dissertation: “Stealth Inequities in K-12 Public Schools; How Fundraising PTAs Entrench Hierarchies and Exploring Pathways Toward Equity”
Advisor: C. Kirabo Jackson, Abraham Harris Professor of Education and Social Policy
Committee: Jackson (chair), Spillane, Mulroy
Research focus: The causes and consequences of fundraising by parent-teacher organizations. The larger theme of her work examines the mismatches between the promises and reality of education and policy
Quoted: “Claire is a question driven researcher,” said her advisor, Kirabo Jackson, Abraham Harris Professor of Education and Social Policy and a member of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors. “She's not going to restrict herself to any disciplinary frame; she really chooses the approach that is most suitable to shed light on the question at hand."
Does school spending matter? Mackevicius co-authored the extremely influential paper “The Distribution of School Spending Impacts with Jackson, which came about in part because she was studying meta-analysis in class and suggested Jackson use it as a tool.
Real world impact: When Jackson was approached to be an expert witness in a legal case challenging the school funding system in Delaware, he asked Mackevicius for help. “She was very, very motivated and jumped at the opportunity to really have a lasting impact on the world,” he said. And she did. As a result of the case, “the amount of money that's supporting low-income students in Delaware, and preschool programs, basically doubled,” Jackson said. “That was probably a more fulfilling experience than the publication that came out.”
Awards and distinctions: Mackevicius won the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in 2022. She is co-organizer of the Quant for What? Collective. She played a foundational role establishing the SESP equity book club, took the lead in organizing a school wide Town Hall during the early days of the pandemic and contributed to the drafting and dissemination of the 2020 SESP community letter on social justice. “She’s continued to be an elder state person, and always been a strong advocate for SESP students,” Jackson said.
Carolyn Swen
Dissertation: “Called to Work: An Exploration of Calling Narratives in the Experience of Challenging Work”
Advisors: Dan McAdams, the Henry Wade Rogers Professor and professor of human development and social policy; James Spillane
Committee: McAdams, Spillane, lspa-Landa
Research focus: Swen wanted to know why some people—including teachers and school principals—feel a ‘calling’ to do their work. She interviewed educators and actors and found a calling is indispensable, because when things get difficult, it can help them survive a near impossible job. Principals say they are called out of a sense of destiny, duty, sensitivity to the needs of others, personal fulfillment, and even a sense of exceptionalism. But a calling can be detrimental to the well-being, health, and personal lives.
Quoted: “Carolyn’s research captures beautifully how we can do research that generates useful and usable empirical knowledge,” said Spillane. “It’s an important goal in applied fields such as ours but do so in ways that are enriched and informed by fundamental social theory that has stood the test of time, such as Max Weber, and even Aristotle.”
Doctor of Philosophy in Human Development and Social Policy
Mario Guerra
Dissertation: “From Ego to Eco: Understanding Human Identity within Natural Systems”
Advisor: Megan Bang, professor of learning sciences and director of the Center on Native American and Indigenous Studies
Committee: Bang (chair); Bruce Sherin, professor of learning sciences; Shirin Vossoughi, associate professor of learning sciences
Research focus: How identity and relationships shape people and how self is constructed and transformed.
How he got here: Guerra moved to Northwestern from the University of Washington, Seattle in 2019, just before the global pandemic. “It’s been a ride,” said Bang, his advisor. Guerra has been involved in a wide range of projects, including the Family Leadership, Design Collaborative, the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program, Indigenous STEAM and Northwestern’s hybrid course with Evanston Township High School.
Quoted: “Mario insists on following ideas and understanding them deeply, and he is an incredibly adept theoretician,” Bang said. “Mario reads and reads and reads…he is also an excellent writer. It has been a great joy to see his writing, evolve, and to hear him say, ‘I'm actually happy with this.’ Or ‘it was really helpful to write this. I’m clear about my ideas.’”
Jessica Marshall
Dissertation: “Teaching for Repair: Examining Teachers’ Approaches to Implementation of a Mandated Curriculum on Policy Violence and the Struggle for Justice in Chicago”
Advisors: Vossoughi and Coburn,
Committee: Vossoughi (co-chair); Coburn (co-chair); Bang; Elizabeth Todd-Breland, associate professor, University of Illinois at Chicago
Research focus: Marshall develops civic and political learning experiences that consider the identities, experiences and dreams of young people, particularly those from marginalized communities. She served as a graduate research assistant, program designer, and instructor with professor Sepehr Vakil’s Young People’s Race, Power, and Technology project.
Quoted: “Educators across the country and at every level of the system are grappling with how to teach challenging topics during challenging times,” Coburn said. “Her dissertation reminds us that history is always in the present, and that teachers and students are navigating the past, present, and future as they learn with one another. I think often of her dissertation and the lessons I am learning from reading it in my own teaching,” she added. “Her dissertation research has so much to teach the world.”
Life before grad school: Marshall was founding director of the department of social science and civic engagement for Chicago Public Schools. Earlier in her career, she spent eight years teaching high school social studies and special education in New York City and Chicago public schools.
Awards: She received a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. As a pre-doctoral fellow with the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), Marshall launched a research practice partnership with the Chicago Public Schools and worked on revising the district’s Reparations Won Curriculum.
Other degrees: Marshall earned a bachelor’s in sociology modified with Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Dartmouth College and a master’s in special education from City College of the City University of New York.
Next stop: The Spencer Foundation
Doctor of Philosophy in Learning Sciences and Computer Science
Stephanie T. Jones
Dissertation: “Computing at the End of the World: Examining Black Life, Anti-Blackness and Liberatory Pursuits in Computing Practice and Learning”
Advisor: Marcelo Worsley, associate professor of learning sciences, Karr Family Associate Professor of Computer Science.
Committee: Worsley (chair), kihana miraya ross, assistant professor of Black studies; Danny Martin, professor of education and mathematics at University of Illinois at Chicago
Research Interests: Black life, anti-Blackness, learning, liberation and computing education
About Jones: Her great grandmother was a one room schoolteacher in Georgia in the 1920’s, the daughter of formerly enslaved and cotton sharecropper parents. She wants to know: what does it mean to come from a legacy of people who fought to learn and teach? She earned bachelor’s degrees in computer and electrical engineering at Villanova University and a master's in computer science from Northwestern.
Claim to fame: Originally a computer science student, she was poached from the program by associate professor Marcelo Worsley and became an ambassador for the for the joint PhD program in computer sciences and learning sciences. She has been a leading voice in helping other Black students imagine what it looks like to engage in computer science.
Awards: Jones has a record of successful grant writing and was awarded the National GEM Consortium Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Processing Foundation Teaching Fellowship. Additionally she received several grants across Northwestern to fund her doctoral research from units such as the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the Kaplan Center for the Humanities, The Graduate School, and more.
Quoted: “There's a certain level of authenticity to how she engages with people and her work,” Worsley said. “And she’s one of the few people who actually knows songs from the 90s. She helped grow sort of the Soul Train culture in our lab that I am infinitely grateful for. It makes me feel less old and brings a certain amount of life to the work we do.”