Many people have come together over the past year to make this work possible. We have enjoyed focus groups, one-on-ones, coffee hours, repeat conversations, and more emails than we can count. All of these interactions have resulted in a preliminary proposal that is both broad in its scope and rich in detail. You can read the preliminary infrastructure proposal on KCWorks here: https://works.hcommons.org/records/a4fyh-z5q70
In Winter 2025, we will host a gathering of co-thinkers who will work to refine the ideas presented in the pre-proposal. We are excited to share that the following research-oriented thinkers will join us in collaboration. We will also be joined by many of our practice and community oriented colleagues for an evening meal and discussion!
| Name | Bio |
| Aaron McKim | Aaron McKim is an Associate Professor in Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources (AFNR) Education at Michigan State University. In this role, Aaron offers trainings and courses for current and future high school AFNR teachers. Additionally, Aaron conducts research on innovative support mechanisms that retain AFNR teachers and enhance their curriculum. |
| Angela Locks | Dr. Angela M. Locks has a long-standing commitment to and expertise in diversity in higher education. In the nearly three decades she has worked in higher education, including the most recent 16 years spent at CSU Long Beach (CSULB), her work consistently values equity, diversity, collaboration, and promoting the holistic growth of students, faculty, staff, and administrators. Her scholarly work examines college access and college experiences for diverse college students with an emphasis on retention, institutional diversity praxis, and the relationships between college student interactions with diverse others and diversity program engagement. Currently she serves as the Educational Leadership Department Chair, College of Education and previously she served as the Executive Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Academic Affairs from 2020 to 2024, at CSULB. |
| Breanne Litts | Breanne is a student of education, nature, technology, and culture. Her curiosities are focused on how we can work with communities to use and design technologies that support learning, sharing, and preserving of culture. She works as an Associate Professor in Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences at Utah State University, where she desires to enact her values to conduct research and design with communities. She deeply values reciprocal and interdependent partnerships with mutually beneficial outcomes that further the collective over the individual. She has formal training in learning sciences, multicultural education, game design, education technology, and cross-cultural design. |
| Carmen McCallum | Carmen McCallum is an associate dean in the college of education at eastern michigan university. Focusing on faculty affairs and community engagement, she is particularly interested in exploring creative ways of establishing collaborative relationships with external stakeholders. |
| Corina Qaaġraq Kramer | Corina Qaaġraq Kramer, is an Iñupiaq Indigenous scholar from Noorvik and Kotzebue Alaska. Corina is a community leader with extensive frontline experience. She specializes in integrating traditional Indigenous knowledge with Western practices and policy to improve the well-being and sovereignty of Native communities. Her advocacy aims to restore Indigenous peoples’ rights to leadership and revive their connections to culture, land, and communities. |
| Emily Pasek | Emily Pasek is a geoscientist, artist, and PhD candidate in Michigan State University’s Geocognition Research Laboratory. She is also the visual-noketaker for this gathering. |
| Gaia Dempsey | Though my formal education is in literature and urban studies, my innate curiosity about the furthest edges of human knowledge and capability led me to a fulfilling career in technology and applied research over the last 14 years. With a particular interest in how humans make critical decisions, coordinate, and evolve alongside the technologies we create, I found my niche in impact-focused technology startups. As a product-oriented generalist, my portfolio spans early-stage technologies, such as wearable AR systems, computer vision, LiDAR, dynamic holographic displays, and more recently, AI and forecasting science. This diverse, multidisciplinary experience has honed my ability to challenge established wisdom and generate innovative ideas and methodologies when developing applied technology and research programs. |
| Gillian Roehrig | I have been a professor of STEM Education at the University of Minnesota for 20 years. My research explores STEM teaching and learning in partnership with K-12 schools, including rural, urban, and international settings. |
| Jahshua Smith | |
| Jerrod A Henderson | Dr. Jerrod A. Henderson (“Dr. J”) is an Assistant Professor in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the Cullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston (UH). He has dedicated his career to increasing the number of students who are in pathways to pursue STEM careers. For example, he co-founded the St. Elmo Brady STEM Academy (SEBA), an educational intervention that introduces underrepresented and underserved fourth and fifth-grade students and their families to hands-on STEM experiences. His research group seeks to understand engineering identity trajectories and success mechanisms throughout lifespans using action-based participatory research and novel methodologies such as photovoice, IPA, and draw-an-engineer and the development of research-informed interventions to improve student success. |
| Julie Libarkin | I am a Professor of Earth & Environmental Science at Michigan State University where I run the Geocognition Research Laboratory investigating how people perceive, understand, and make decisions about the planet and human impacts. Currently, her research focuses on model-driven research design, community-engaged research, and mentoring to address access, inclusion, equity, and justice in STEM and academia. |
| Kathleen Fitzpatrick | Kathleen Fitzpatrick is Interim Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies and Professor of English at Michigan State University. Prior to assuming this role, she was Director of DH@MSU and founding director of Mesh Research, a lab focused on the future of scholarly communication. She is project director of Knowledge Commons, an open-access, open-source network serving more than 50,000 scholars and practitioners across the humanities and around the world, and she is author of several books, including Leading Generously: Tools for Transformation (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024), Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) and Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy (NYU Press, 2011). |
| Kim Wright | Kim is the Assistant Director of NNERPP, a professional learning organization for education-focused research-practice partnerships. In this role, she coordinates and creates professional learning opportunities for members of the NNERPP and the RPP field-at-large. Prior to joining NNERPP, Wright spent close to a decade working as a STEM teacher and another decade working as a STEM Education researcher. Once she learned about the research-practice partnership model, she could not “unsee” that supporting long-term and sustained research partnerships between research- and practice-side folks was her path and she has not looked back since. |
| Kristina Christian | I am a proud elementary principal in the city of Detroit! I am currently working towards earning my doctorate in Educational Leadership. I have been in k-12 education for over 20 years. |
| Laura Sumpter | |
| Lesa Clarkson | Lesa Clarkson is a Mathematics Education Professor at the University of Minnesota. Her community-engaged research focuses on equity and access and the mathematics experiences of underrepresented urban students. She created and directs Prepare2Nspire, a mathematics tutoring and mentoring program, now in its twelfth year. |
| Linnea Beckett | I am an anthropologist of education. As an aspiring subversive intellectual, I think with feminist decolonial methodologies and study life-affirming participatory and community engaged research in an effort to render strange settler colonial and white supremacist practices often normalized in the research endeavor, PK-12 schools and community relations. Most of my work studies how people learn in informal contexts with a focus on intergenerational learning and in the past decade I have found myself in predominantly STEM spaces to think about how to transform the cultures of STEM to be more inclusive. |
| Megan Schrauben | Megan Schrauben holds a B.S. in physics and math education from the UM and a MSASE from Michigan Tech. Megan has held internships at CERN, Fermilab, the NSCL at MSU, and in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, taught high school physics and math, was Director of a Math and Science Center, and a Consultant for the MDE. Megan supports the Governor’s MiSTEM Advisory Council and grants dollars for STEM programming for the State of Michigan at the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity and serves on the board of the Council of State Science Supervisors. |
| Nicole Springer | Nicole Springer is the Senior Director of Professional Development and Scholarship & Chief Equity Officer at Campus Compact. Across these roles, she advances the Compact’s holistic approach as the professional home for community engagement professionals and stewards Campus Compact’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. During her time in the field of community-engaged scholarship, she has focused her efforts on supporting faculty and staff in their community-engaged/engagement scholarship, curriculum creation, and equity-based assessment/evaluation. |
| Patricia Jaimes | I am the external evaluator for this grant. I received my PhD in STEM Education from Michigan State University. My background and expertise are in equity and inclusion in STEM. I work with engineering/STEM instructors on integrating equity-focused teaching practices into their courses and have developed/facilitated numerous DEI in STEM workshops. |
| Paty Jaimes | I am the external evaluator for this grant. I received my PhD in STEM Education from Michigan State University. My background and expertise are in equity and inclusion in STEM. I work with engineering/STEM instructors on integrating equity-focused teaching practices into their courses and have developed/facilitated numerous DEI in STEM workshops. |
| Paula Arce-Trigatti | Paula is the inaugural Director of NNERPP, which launched in 2016 at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. In this role, she organizes and coordinates learning opportunities for members across the Network and the RPP field at-large in order to improve both our theoretical understanding of partnerships and how they actually work in practice. Prior to joining NNERPP, she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Houston, as well as an M.S. in economics, a B.A. in Music, and a B.S. in Business, all from Florida State University. |
| Quiana Lewis Wallace | Quiana Lewis Wallace, PhD, MPH, is a research scientist II in youth development at Child Trends, where she specializes in community-engaged research with a focus on youth participatory methods. She brings over a decade of experience designing and implementing participatory research approaches that center community voices to drive system-level change and enhance child and adolescent well-being. Previously, at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, she led strategic grant-making initiatives, including pioneering a youth-led funding program. Quiana’s expertise lies in fostering meaningful collaboration with youth and communities to ensure research translates into actionable outcomes. She holds a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, an MPH from Yale University, and a BA from Fisk University. |
| Rashida L Harrison | Rashida L. Harrison, PhD, is a Black Feminist educator, researcher, community-centered scholar, activist, and mentor. She comes with over sixteen years of dedicated experience in designing, implementing, and evaluating political education community initiatives. Her expertise lies in fostering inclusion and driving economic empowerment across diverse constituencies. She has served in a variety of positions at Michigan State University, lending her expertise in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, including as a mentor for STEM Teaching and Learning Facility at MSU. Dr. Harrison designed an inclusive mentoring curriculum aimed at addressing inequities in STEM elds. Beyond academia, she is the Director of Education at Ghostlight Arts Initiatives, where she channels her passion for theater arts education, creating access for underserved communities in Detroit. Dr. Harrison continues to make signicant contributions as a consultant, board member, and advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion across multiple domains. |
| Sam Severance | I develop education innovations and study how they may support all students and teachers in having more meaningful and empowering STEM learning experiences. When organizing design work, I explore how to optimally arrange diverse forms of expertise to achieve more inclusive design spaces within research-practice partnerships. I also examine how to support the implementation of innovations, particularly how to sustain innovations and bring them to scale across large education systems. |
| Samantha Holquist | Samantha “Sammy” Holquist (she/her/hers), PhD, is an expert in community-engaged research methods, improvement science, and implementation science. She partners with youth, practitioners, communities, and policymakers to create programs, practices, and policies responsive to the varied needs and experiences of youth, families, and communities. |
| Sarah Galey | Dr. Sarah Galey-Horn is an educational researcher specializing in social network analysis, improvement science, and policy implementation. Her current work focuses on building improvement networks in STEM policy contexts. |
| Sarah Galey-Horn | Dr. Sarah Galey-Horn is an educational researcher specializing in social network analysis, improvement science, and policy implementation. Her current work focuses on building improvement networks in STEM policy contexts. |
| Tamara Clegg | Tamara Clegg is an associate professor in the College of Information at the University of Maryland, where she is the director of the Iribe Initiative for Diversity and Inclusion in Computing. She also co-directs the Youth eXperience (YX) Lab and has an affiliate position in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership within the College of Education. She received her Ph.d. from Georgia Tech’s College of Computing and her B.S. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University. Tamara’s work focuses on designing technology (e.g., social media, mobile apps, e-textiles, community displays) to support life-relevant STEM learning where learners, particularly those from minoritized, resource-constrained communities, engage in SEM in the context of achieving personally relevant goals. She seeks to understand ways such learning environments and technologies support STEM disposition development and critical data literacies. Tamara’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Studies, the Spencer Foundation, Nickelodeon and Google. |
| Wade Berger | My name is Wade Berger, and I am a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Nichole Pinkard where I study informal learning environments, the educators who work in informal spaces, and the infrastructure of learning in communities. I completed my PhD at Northwestern University where I studied how informal educators learned from and with each other. I’m also very active in the museum education field and am currently a board member with the Journal of Museum Education. |