PhD Candidate Maritza Salazar Receives Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship

Please join us in congratulating Maritza E. Salazar, USC Rossier PhD candidate, for receiving the 2023-2024 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, awarded by the National Academies (NASEM). The goals of the Ford Foundation fellowships are to increase the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, to maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and to increase […]

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Kitchen Promoted, Desir Joins Pullias Faculty

Congratulations to Joseph (Joey) Kitchen, recently promoted to Associate Research Professor, and a hearty welcome to Steve Desir, who recently joined our faculty as Assistant Research Professor. Dr. Kitchen has served as a Co-Investigator for the Pullias Center’s Promoting At-promise Student Success (PASS) project since joining the Center’s faculty in 2021. He initially joined the Pullias team in 2015 as […]

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Dr. John Brooks Slaughter Receives USC Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award

Dr. John Brooks Slaughter, University Professor Emeritus of Education and Computer Engineering, was recently presented with the prestigious USC Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award by USC President Carol L. Folt. Dr. Slaughter has had a remarkably distinguished and inspiring career, which began as an electrical engineer and includes leading two universities — University of Maryland as Chancellor and Occidental College as […]

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2023 Pullias Doctoral Grads Look to Enact Change

This May, two Pullias Center doctoral candidates will graduate from the USC Rossier School of Education. We would like to offer our sincerest congratulations to both Jordan Harper and Kaylan Baxter as they continue their professional careers. Now, with doctoral degrees in hand, these new grads reflect on their time at the Center and share their future plans to enact […]

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Zoë B. Corwin Receives Community-Engaged Teaching and Research Award from USC’s JEP

Congratulations to Pullias Center’s Dr. Zoë B. Corwin upon receiving the USC Joint Educational Project Award for Community Engaged Teaching and Research. This award was established in 2019 to recognize USC faculty who meaningfully integrate community engagement into their teaching and/or research. Dr. Corwin, a Research Professor, serves as the Principal Investigator for the Promoting At-promise Student Success (PASS) Project […]

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Spotlight on Dr. Steve Desir, the newest faculty member of the Pullias Center

By Julie Posselt and Steve Desir This Spring, the Pullias Center is thrilled to have Dr. Steve Desir join its faculty. Desir is an expert in racial equity issues in recruitment, admissions, and institutional change work. He has been working for the last 3.5 years with the Inclusive Graduate Education Network and, for the last two years, with the Equity […]

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An Opinion: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Are Necessary, But Poor Substitutes For Justice

By John Slaughter Many higher education leaders and pundits are convinced that affirmative action in college and university admission practices will be on the chopping block as a result of the US. Supreme Court’s hearings on the Harvard and University of North Carolina cases before them. The plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, have charged that, in their efforts to achieve […]

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Pullias Center Faculty Looks Forward to the 2021-2022 Academic Year

The start of a new academic year brings hope and promise that the pandemic and its challenges are decreasing. Teaching classes and doing research over Zoom was not the direction any of us suspected the previous academic year to go, and yet educators and students alike managed to persevere and move forward with their educational work. The University of Southern […]

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Zoë B. Corwin: Learning More than Tricks from Skateboarders

A year ago, I invited colleagues from across USC to collaborate on an interdisciplinary participatory action research study to explore the intersection of skateboarding, mental wellness, and community. We called the study Mattering in the Margins because we wanted to highlight the complex and wonderful ways that skaters thrive despite regularly being stigmatized and pushed to the margins of educational and […]

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Inside the New Skateboarding Study: Reflections from the Researchers

In the summer of 2020, USC faculty – with funding from the USC Provost’s Office – embarked on the Mattering in the Margins study to explore how Los Angeles area skateboarders navigate wellness and foster community. In February of 2021, we welcomed a brilliant group of skateboarders – between the ages of 18-30 – as participatory action research collaborators. The […]

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