Whether it is the inclusion of UNCW doctoral students in presenting for the 2022 Professional Learning Day with Watson College of Education (WCE) partner schools and teachers or designing symposia for national research conferences in which WCE doctoral students also present, Dr. Shawn S. Savage continues to explore opportunities to effectively fuse research and teaching in ways that enable enhanced graduate student socialization and collaboration with colleagues within and outside of WCE’s Educational Leadership Department.
Dr. Savage joined the faculty at UNCW in fall 2021. He is currently an assistant professor in WCE’s Department of Educational Leadership and co-coordinator of the M.Ed. in Curriculum Studies for Equity and Add-on Licensure in Curriculum & Instruction programs.
In March of 2022, Dr. Savage collaborated with a team of six doctoral students enrolled in WCE’s Ed.D. in Educational Leadership with a specialization in Curriculum and Instruction (C&I). The team, which included Rabina Bissessar, Sierra Bowling, Jennifer Fine, Emily Myers, Adam Perkins, and Douglas Thumm shared their work with partnership teachers from across North Carolina during WCE’s 2022 PDS Professional Learning Day. Their session entitled, “With liberty and justice for ALL: Practitioners’ K-12 curriculum imaginings and insights” was well-attended and deeply impactful.
Similarly, from his advising of Spring 2022 graduating master’s students Lacy Davis, Kathryn Day, Latasha McCollum, and Kristina Wyatt, Dr. Savage proposed a session for the American Educational Studies Association’s 2022 meeting that also included his students’ work. It was accepted. Their symposium entitled, “Dreaming into materiality: Paving possibilities for equitable educational futures” included several papers related to the culminating projects of the participating graduates.
Ronnie Lee Marshall, another UNCW doctoral student, and current Assistant Principal at Orange Middle School in Orange County, presented his research with Dr. Savage and Dr. Willie Harmon [then, a doctoral candidate at Texas A&M University] as part of a symposium entitled “Blackmale-nificence: The presence and power of Black male excellence in educational diversity” in Atlanta, GA in the Fall 2022.
Relatedly, in 2022, C&I doctoral student Rabina Bissessar became the graduate student representative for the Caribbean and African Studies in Education special interest group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), a first for UNCW. This was, in part, because Dr. Savage connected her with the opportunity to engage with the wider education community based on her research interests and their work together.
In October 2023, Dr. Savage and Dr. Lynch, co-coordinator of WCE’s M.Ed. and add-on licensure programs in curriculum studies, presented on research and teaching through Black epistemic legacies at the Black Doctoral Network’s National Conference in Atlanta with other junior faculty and graduate students. They also presented research and performed some of their scholarship poetically at the Critical Race Studies in Education Association (CRSEA) 2023 conference in Chicago. Dr. Savage also presented with University of Illinois Chicago doctoral student Samuel Texeira at the CRSEA conference.
Most recently, collaborative work with WCE doctoral students and recent master’s graduates was presented at the 2023 American Educational Studies Association conference in Louisville, Kentucky in November. Doctoral students Hissah Alzharani, Karen Archer, and S. Travis Crowder shared their research in a session entitled, “Critical interlocutors: Practitioner-scholars opening owed imaginations to prevent education(al) extinction(s).” (Rabina Bissessar also contributed to the proposed session.) A session featuring the work of master’s graduates Joshua McGee, Brandy Metzger, Andrea Perrone and Ruth Pitstick was entitled, “Creatively critical social (re)imaginings: Practitioners’ actions for educational and societal changes.”
“The fusion of research and teaching provides opportunities to help students benefit from critical socialization experiences in the academy,” Dr. Savage said. “It also helps WCE contribute to the UNCW’s Strategic Plan’s first pillar of ‘unparalleled opportunities’ and the second pillar of ‘nationally prominent programs’. I look forward to continued collaborations with Dr. Lynch and master’s and doctoral students in the future to sustain and build on these efforts.”
WCE’s Curriculum Studies programs are designed to provide education leaders and other professionals with the knowledge and skills needed to imagine, design and transform the learning experiences of a diverse population of students through new approaches to pedagogy, learning and community engagement that foster a culture of inclusion and equity. Courses are offered online to accommodate the schedules of working professionals.
For more information visit the program websites:
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