Meet Alejandra Frausto Aceves: PhD
Part of an ongoing series featuring our newest PhDs
Alejandra Frausto Aceves (PhD26) used hands-on, community-involved methods to study how diasporic families engage in sophisticated teaching and learning across multiple modalities.
For her dissertation, she explored the intergenerational tradition of making tortillas among families in the US, Mexico, and Guatemala to understand how families’ interconnected ways of knowing and teaching might inform science education.
"Alejandra came in already running — published, and having been deep in research for a long while,” her advisor, Professor Megan Bang, said during a doctoral hooding ceremony. “The seed of her dissertation happened in her second year when she said, 'I don't know if I can do my dissertation about this.'
"In years to come, we will read her dissertation chapters turned into publications as foundations for our field. People down the road will think: 'this is what methodological innovation looks like' — driven by principle and a desire to honor the folks you work with. She's done it gloriously."
- Dissertation: “Amasando y Enseñando: Exploring Families' Interconnected Ways of Knowing & Teaching”
- Advised by: Shirin Vossoughi and Megan Bang
- Committee: Bang, Rochelle Gutiérrez, Ananda Marin, Brian Reiser, Vossoughi
Frausto Aceves was awarded an incoming Cognitive Science Fellowship her first year by the Cognitive Science Program Committee at Northwestern. Her research was also supported by a Sandra K. Abell Institute for Doctoral Students Fellowship in 2025 and a National Association for Research in Science Teaching Graduate Student Travel Award.
She also received a pre-dissertation international research grant to travel to Chile in 2024 and an international conference travel grant to travel to Portugal in 2026 from Northwestern's Buffett Institute for Global Affairs to advance her work in science education.
Frausto Aceves was co-editor of a special issue in the journal Cultural Studies of Science Education honoring the contributions of Brazilian scholar Paulo Freire to science education. Her first solo-authored piece, “'There Are Places Full of Beauty': Desettling High School Students' Scientific Writing,” was published in the journal Science Education.
She received her bachelor's in the teaching of chemistry from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2005 and her master's master's in educational leadership from Depaul University in 2014.
Before pursuing her doctorate, Frausto Aceves was a project-based learning manager and a science teacher in Chicago Public Schools. In the fall, she'll begin as an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois Chicago's College of Education.
Frausto Aceves was among fourteen new PhDs were honored and gifted regalia before the 2026 convocation celebration during the third annual doctoral robing ceremony at Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy.
The ceremony recognized graduates from SESP's three doctoral programs — Human Development and Social Policy, Learning Sciences, and the joint Computer Science and Learning Sciences program. Each was among the first of its kind in the nation and continues to inspire innovation in education and research.
Human Development and Social Policy students examine how policy affects people — and how people, in turn, influence policy — across the human lifespan. The Learning Sciences program integrates cognition, social context and design to improve how people learn.
The Computer Science and Learning Sciences program, offered between the School of Education and Social Policy and the McCormick School of Engineering, explores how technology can support learning across all ages and contexts.