Dean Charles Martinez and the College of Education community proudly congratulate seven COE faculty members and one alumna who were honored as part of this year’s annual AERA gathering in Denver, Colorado in April.
These recognitions highlight the impactful, world-class research happening every day at the College of Education,
Martinez said. We are excited to see the hard work of our faculty celebrated for the difference they are making in our COE community, across Texas and beyond.
The large amount of faculty recognitions at AERA exemplifies the strength of COE’s leading education programs nationally. Additionally, four Educational Leadership and Policy faculty members — Jennifer Holme, Liliana Garces, Sarah Woulfin, and Denisa Gandara— authored or co-authored chapters for the new edition of AERA’s Handbook of Education Policy Research.
Educational Leadership and Policy (ELP) professor Liliana Garces was among 29 exemplary scholars who were selected as the 2025 AERA Fellows. Fellows are nominated by peers and selected by a committee. The program honors scholars for their exceptional contributions and outstanding work in educational research.
Additionally, ELP associate professor Denisa Gandara and her team of co-authors and researchers was selected to receive the 2025 Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award, which is presented annually in recognition of the most outstanding article published in an AERA journal. The award celebrated the piece Inside the Black Box: Detecting and Mitigating Algorithmic Bias Across Racialized Groups in College Student-Success Prediction, which examined how predictive models often used in higher education underperform for Black and Hispanic students and can lead to misclassifying student success and failure.
Meanwhile, ELP professor David DeMatthews was awarded the Outstanding Public Communication of Educational Research Award, which is presented annually to a scholar who has excelled in conveying important findings to a variety of audiences and helped widen the public’s understanding and appreciation for education research. He has published more than 150 research articles in academic journals, book chapters and edited volumes, as well as nearly 80 editorials on a range of topics impacting school-aged children, families, educators, and school leaders. His ideas and expertise have been featured in national and local publications that inform the country, as well as Texas students, parents and districts.
Rachel White, an ELP associate professor, and her team of co-authors received the Short Policy Award Report for their publication, The Costs of Conflict: Fiscal Impact of Culturally Divisive Conflict on Public Schools in the U.S. The article included direct expenditures, indirect costs and staff turnover among the topics it covered.
Curriculum and Instruction associate professor Grace MyHyun Kim and North Cooc, associate professor in Special Education, received the Best Paper Award from AERA’s International Studies Special Interest Group for a co-authored research paper titled Immigrant and Language Minority Students’ Teaching Career Expectations, which will be published in the Educational Researcher journal.
Catherine Riegle-Crumb, a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, was recognized during the AERA Publications Reception as Educational Researcher’s Outstanding Reviewer for 2024.
Alumna Andrene Castro, who graduated from the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, and her team of co-authors received the Review of Research Award for their article, Drawn Into Policy: A Systematic Review of School Rezoning Rationales, Processes, and Outcomes. The review centered on school rezoning and consolidated fragmented but related bodies of work to create a comprehensive understanding of school rezoning, the underlying strategies and processes, and the outcomes, as well as highlights the need for reconceptualizing rezoning.
Congratulations to our outstanding faculty and their world-changing work!
