• "The Comprehensive School Literacy Model Project" is a partnership between AU and District of Columbia Public Schools to implement evidence-based literacy practices in secondary schools, awarded to Dr. Danielle Sodani, Dr. Sarah Irvine Belson, Annie Karabell, Alina Thouyaret, and Janique Parrott-Gaffney. Read more.
• Dr. Kenjus Watson's project to reduce Black youth suicide received funding from AU to produce a video and toolkit around a camp he co-leads in Oregon. Read more.
• Dr. Sung Ryung Lyu and Dr. Ocheze Joseph received funding from the Spencer Foundation Small Grants Program for their research "Teaching and Living in Gentrifying Immigrant Communities of Color: Learning from the Lived Experiences of Early Childhood Educators." Read more.
• Dr. Shari Watkins and Dr. Brian McGowan received a $12,500 award from the Spencer Foundation to support the project Establishing a National Data Repository on Blackness and STEM. Read more.
• Dr. Carolyn Parker secured a National Science Foundation grant to develop artificial intelligence (AI) professional learning programs for teachers and students at Friendship Public Charter School, one of the largest charter school networks in the District of Columbia. Read more.
• Interim Dean Dr. Rodney Hopson was awarded a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to be used to convene, support, and promote culturally responsive inquiry. Read more.

Grant for "The Comprehensive School Literacy Model Project"

Dr. Danielle Sodani, BA SIS ’96, MA CAS ’03; Dr. Sarah Irvine Belson; Annie Karabell; Alina Thouyaret, MAT '11; and Janique Parrott-Gaffney

This $75,000 grant from American University’s Translating Research into Action Center supports a research-practice partnership between AU's Institute for Innovation in Education and DC Public Schools (DCPS) focused on implementing evidence-based literacy practices in secondary schools. Through the initiative, educators and researchers will co-develop a comprehensive literacy plan for DCPS middle and high schools through systematic translational activities designed to build educators’ use of evidence-based literacy practices to support all students.

“Through this project, we can continue our six-year literacy-focused partnership with DC Public Schools and contribute to AU’s capacity to conduct meaningful research translation to support our community,” Sodani said. Researchers and practitioners will collaborate to undertake implementation and efficacy studies while carrying out evidence-based literacy instruction across DCPS secondary schools.

DCPS leaders, teachers, and students will benefit from the increased use of evidence-based reading practices, ideally leading to improved reading outcomes for students. Guidance documentation will also be created so that other school districts can use this research to create comprehensive school literacy plans.

Grant for "Teaching and Living in Gentrifying Immigrant Communities of Color: Learning from the Lived Experiences of Early Childhood Educators"

Dr. Sung Ryung Lyu and Dr. Ocheze Joseph

Funded in December, the project investigates how early childhood education educators in Northwest Washington, DC, have adapted their pedagogy in response to the gentrification of their local communities. Lyu and Joseph want to know how ECE educators in gentrifying neighborhoods negotiate gentrification in their lived experiences outside of school and in their classroom practices.

The outcomes of this research include academic journal manuscripts that contribute to the fields of urban education, multicultural education, and early childhood education, while also strengthening AU's ECE courses.

Dr. Lyu said, "We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to learn alongside DCPS early childhood educators and DCPS school administrators, and we thank the Spencer Foundation for its support in making this collaborative work possible."

Lyu and Joseph's aim is for participants—particularly educators—to have opportunities to share their wisdom and lived experiences and to engage in collective reflection on the contextualization of curriculum through place-based approaches in early childhood education. Students enrolled in AU's ECE programs will also benefit from these outcomes. At the same time, Lyu and Joseph as researchers will benefit by learning from participating educators.

Grant for "Examining Blackness in Postsecondary STEM Education through a Multidimensional-Multiplicative Lens"

Dr. Shari Watkins and Dr. Brian McGowan

The $12,500 Spencer Foundation award supports phase one of the project "Examining Blackness in Postsecondary STEM Education through a Multidimensional-Multiplicative Lens." This phase collects focus group interviews from 750 Black undergraduate students in STEM, creating a repository of publicly accessible data for researchers nationwide.

McGowan said, "This grant allows us to extend our commitment to equity centered research in STEM and to develop a national data infrastructure that will support future scholars, practitioners, and institutions. I am deeply grateful to the Spencer Foundation for investing in work that will have a long-term impact."

This study of Black STEM undergraduates across six sites will eventually house information on the experiences of more than 3,000 students so that scholars, educators, and institutions can use the data to address a critical gap in existing data.

Watkins said, "As the primary investigator of the 'Black EpiSTEMologies Project' at AU, I have worked to transform Black students’ experiences in STEM into knowledge, action, and support. Our work affirms that research, mentorship, and collaboration are critical structures necessary to sustaining Black excellence and persistence in STEM."

Grant for "Cultivating Evaluation Leadership & Building Capacity Through Times of Urgency"

Interim Dean Dr. Rodney Hopson

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant supports a set of convenings coordinated by the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) in the Baker School of Education at American University, College of Education at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, and the Mary Fulton College at Arizona State University, focused on strengthening relationships, learning, and collective capacity across the evaluation field.

These convenings build on CREA’s leadership in culturally responsive and equity-centered evaluation and extend the themes advanced at the last conference, CREA VIII. The series is designed to bring together evaluators, scholars, funders, policymakers, community leaders, and emerging professionals for structured dialogue, shared reflection, and collective sense-making around the role of evaluation in a time of increasing complexity, contestation, and change.

The funds will be used to convene working group meetings and dissemination activities designed to deepen "field weaving" - the relational, ethical, and strategic work of connecting people, organizations, and ideas across traditionally siloed spaces. Regional convenings in Chicago (Jan, 2026), Phoenix (March, 2026), and Washington, DC (April, 2026), will converge core resources, lessons learned, and next steps toward social change and advocacy. A comprehensive CREA white paper will be prepared as a result of the convenings synthesizing key themes, practical models, and policy implications. These pieces will then form the foundation and serve as a ramp-up to the ninth International CREA Conference in 2026 in Chicago, IL.