By Jonathan Morales

2021年9月1日

萨克拉门托 State’s Pathways Fellows program since 2016 has prepared 55 students and young alumni, nearly all of them underrepresented minorities, to pursue graduate and doctoral studies in educational research.

That work will continue behind a $1.37 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to fund the program for another five years. 这笔赠款将支持另外40-48名研究员，并帮助增加来自传统上代表性不足的群体的教育研究人员的数量。

萨克州立大学是全国仅有的六所获得这项资助的学院和大学之一，这项资助只适用于被指定为少数民族服务机构的校园。

The new funding is a testament to the program’s success in preparing underrepresented students for graduate school and beyond, said Jana Noel, a professor of Education and project director for 囊状态’s Pathways Fellows program.

“A strength for our particular program is that we place fellows in apprenticeship sites all around the 萨克拉门托 area, and as the capital of California, there’s a lot of research and policy that goes on here,” she said. “I think that sets us apart.”

Noel also serves as the program’s co-principal investigator alongside Professor of Ethnic Studies Timothy Fong and Associate Professor of Sociology Jacqueline Brooks.

“You’re often trained in one discipline, and you think that’s the norm. Working with someone else opens your eyes on how to approach research.” -曾旺(Pathways研究员

路径研究员计划通过为研究员提供研究培训、教师指导、研究生院指导以及在萨克拉门托地区研究和政策中心的全职、津贴支持的暑期学徒，致力于增加教育研究的多样性。

The program’s research theme is “Studying Supports and Barriers To and Through Higher Education,” and fellows examine the inequities underrepresented students face as they progress through K-12 and higher education. It is open to upper-division undergraduates and graduate students as well as recent graduates, and prepares them for doctoral programs and to conduct educational research – that is, any academic research geared toward improving education at all levels.

除了两名研究员之外，完成该项目的所有研究员都来自少数族裔背景，90%的教师研究导师也是如此。 这些研究员来自萨克州立大学四个学院的15个系，近70%的人已经进入研究生院，其中10人目前正在攻读博士学位。

诺埃尔说，增加研究的多样性很重要，因为它扩大了研究视角的数量，与学生群体日益多样化相匹配。

“A common question might be, ‘What kind of after-school program should we offer?’” she said. “A person who has had some barriers in their lives – they were underrepresented, had some struggles – wouldn't say, ‘What kinds of programs would we offer?’ They would say, ‘How can we reduce some of the barriers that our students are facing that make it so that they can't even attend those after school-programs?’ ”

Tseng Vang was a graduate Psychology student at 囊状态 and a member of the Pathways Fellows program’s first cohort. Now a doctoral student at UC Davis, he said the program’s interdisciplinary nature – including the fact that his faculty mentor was outside the field of psychology – helped prepare him for doctoral studies and a career in research.

“Learning from someone else that has a different discipline really taught me a lot about being really patient and understanding different perspectives,” Vang said. “You’re often trained in one discipline, and you think that’s the norm. Working with someone else opens your eyes on how to approach research.”

Vang认为他在萨克拉门托县教育办公室的暑期学徒经历进一步拓宽了他的视野，使他走出学术界，进入政策和政府部门。

成为Pathways的一员也有重要的实际好处，Vang说。 The program provides funding for what he called the “hidden costs” of graduate school and doctoral program applications, for example, which add up and can create a barrier to further studies.

“I wouldn't have been able to apply to all the doctoral programs I applied to if I didn't have the funding from the Pathways program,” he said.