My robust graduate education includes advanced programming in Human Rights, Special Education, University Teaching, Gifted Education, and Qualitative Methods. I value the lived experience of student and teacher and the sociocultural factors that mediate the student-teacher-institution relationship. My academic scholarship has earned awards including the P.E.O Scholar Award—a national award recognizing significant contributions to the field, the J. Raymond anAugusta Gerberich Fellowship Fund Award, which I won twice—awarded for superior academic achievement and leadership, and the Outstanding Scholars’ Program Fellowship, now entitled the Jorgenson Fellowship—a multiyear fellowship for exceptional scholarship.