Spotlight on The 2024 Summer Research Fellows
Last week, The Learning Partnership hosted the initial 2-day orientation for the 2024 Summer Research Fellows. These researchers were selected from a national pool of candidates through a competitive selection process. During the orientation there were opportunities to interact with various CAFÉCS partners, including the CPS office of research, the CPS CS Team and faculty members from DePaul and Loyola. The presentations provided a comprehensive understanding of CS education in CPS, roles of CAFÉCS and historical context of CS4All. The summer fellows delighted at the opportunity to work with such large data sets and being in the heart of downtown Chicago. In this blog, the fellows share their background and takeaways on their initial experiences with the fellowship program.
Onur Ramazan graduate student at Washington State Universty:
Originally from Hatay in southeast Turkey, Onur’s current research at WSU focuses on large-scale assessment data addressing issues for underrepresented populations. This summer with The Learning Partnership, he will be looking at access and success in the AP CSP course to study how this course influences other STEM fields like math and science. He is looking forward to the Symposium at the end of the summer to get the opportunity to present his findings and analysis to stakeholders and The Learning Partnership team. The hope is with the feedback he receives, he can submit to an international conference like AERA to discuss with the larger research community.
The orientation provided an opportunity to see presentations from our partners at Chicago Public Schools and to meet the other fellows for the summer. He very much enjoyed exploring Chicago eating at multiple pizza places, Giordano’s being his favorite, and seeing his favorite paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago, “American Gothic” and “Nighthawks”
Wesley Jeffrey PhD from University of California, Irvine:
Having recently graduated from UC-Irvine with his PhD in sociology, Wesley’s research mainly focused on inequality, specifically studying how education shapes inequality–where students go to college, what and how they study, and how they perform as these things affect a lot of later life outcomes. After this summer, Wesley will be going to UC Merced for his postdoc where he will focus on financial aid policy in higher ed and how that changes the dynamics of inequality in education.
This summer with The Learning Partnership, Wesley will be looking the link between high school and college, what courses students take and how that maps onto the majors that they choose. Specifically, he will be looking at how the computer science graduation requirement may or may not increase access and representation in higher education.
Ruiping Huang graduate student at UIC
Ruiping is studying educational psychology, specializing in MSEA (measurement, statistic, evaluation, and assessment). This summer she will be exploring the impact of ECS on CPS students’ science performance, with the use of Skyline as a moderator. This is her third year in America and Chicago. In this city she has been introduced to many things thanks to the multicultural landscape of the various neighborhoods and people of all different cultures she has met over the years.
This summer she is looking forward to really immersing herself in the data and figuring out how to improve her research based on her research questions. Because of all the different groups involved in research with The Learning Partnership, she looks forward to sharing her research at the symposium at the end of the summer. She will be spending most of her time with The Learning Partnership team in the office. She is excited to not only develop stronger relationships with everyone but also it will be a great opportunity for her to practice her English.
Yaurie Hwang recent graduate of Northwestern University
Yaurie recently graduated with a Bachelors in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University. She spent her final quarter interning with The Learning Partnership developing an AI program to process close to 20,000 student responses for ECS pre and posttests. She received some mentorship from Peter Hastings at Depaul as AI and machine learning is a specialty of his. This summer, she looks forward to continuing her work, feeling more confident to face roadblocks on her own and take ownership over this project.
Yaurie found orientation to be eye-opening as she was able to gain a better grasp of all that The Learning Partnership is involved in for CS research. Being able to hear from TLP’s research partners at Chicago Public Schools and CAFÉCS has been really interesting to her. She is looking forward to developing stronger relationships with The Learning Partnership team.