Assistantships allows our PhD students to match their professional and academic interests with faculty led research and teaching initiatives. Most assistantships in the College of Education and Social Services involve the assignment of students to assist in faculty led research projects. Some assistantships are funded through external grants. Graduate level assistantships typically provide 10 or 20 hours of paid work experiences coupled with tuition scholarships.
A full-time 9 month assistantship is $24,000/year with 18 credits of full-time study.
Listed below is a summary of faculty led research projects. Prospective students should identify one or two possible assistantship opportunities. Through their application essay, prospective students should identify how their personal and professional experiences to date align well with the assistantship opportunity, as well as what skills they may bring to bear on the projects.
Research Assistantships
Callahan, Rebecca: State Higher Education Policies and Immigrant College Going
Faculty Name: Rebecca Callahan, PhD
Research Project Title: State Higher Education Policies and Immigrant College Going
Description: In this mixed-methods project, we explore how states' policies around immigrant-origin youths' legal status and language proficiency shapes their postsecondary experiences.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required: Interest and experience working with immigrant-origin youth. Methods: Quantitative secondary data analysis, Critical Policiy Analysis, Interviews, Surveys. Strong writing and organizational skills.
Callahan, Rebecca: Organizational Adaptation: The Provision of Services for ML-EL Students and Special Populations in Rural Schools and Districts
Faculty Name: Rebecca Callahan, PhD
Research Project Title: Organizational Adaptation: The Provision of Services for ML-EL Students and other Special Populations in Rural Schools & Districts
Description: In this mixed-methods project, we explore how educators' training to work with special populations informs how their organizations respond to the challenges of providing comprehensive services for ML-ELs and other low-incidence student populationsin rural contexts.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required: Interest, experience with K-12 special populations, either at school or district level (K-12). Methods: Case Study, Interviews, Surveys, Descriptive Statistics. Strong writing skills.
Castro, Eliana: Encuentros: Constructing AfroLatinx Identities at Home, School, and Beyond
Faculty Name: Eliana Castro, PhD
Description: This interdisciplinary qualitative inquiry project interrogates the process of racial identity formation among AfroLatinx adolescents, integrating their experiences with and insights on the curriculum of the home, school, and third spaces to draw implications for pedagogy, leadership, and policy around curriculum instruction.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required: Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral program: Interest in race/ethnicity; familiarity with theories of identity formation, Experience with interview and focus group data; awareness of asset-based pedagogies; understanding of K-12 classrooms. Ability to communicate nuanced ideas with simple language
Castro, Eliana: Research Collaborative on Race, Racism, and Racialization (R3) in Education
Faculty Name: Eliana Castro, PhD
Research Project Title: Research Collaborative on Race, Racism, and Racialization (R3) in Education
Description: This transdisciplinary research collaborative engages scholars across ¶¶Òõ̽̽ and the greater Burlington community in the academic study of race, racism, and racialization in education. It seeks to grow our collective capacity to produce and disseminate scholarship that informs educational leadership and policy.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required: Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral program: Interest in issues of race in education. Familiarity with critical race theory. Ability to: (1) communicate effectively and efficiently via email, (2) plan and execute productive meeting sessions, (3) conduct outreach to potential new members, (4) promote collaborative activities to a wide audience
Garnett, Bernice: Catamount Community Schools Collaborative: University-School-Community Partnerships
Faculty Name: Bernice Garnett, ScD
Research Project Title: Catamount Community Schools Collaborative: University-School-Community Partnerships
Description: In this mixed methods project, we will focus on sustainable and mutually transformative structures, policies, and practices of the university-assisted community school model to support rural community school implementation.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral program: Interest, experience with K-12 and University partnership models. Interest, experience with educational policy analysis and community schools. Methods: mixed methods, implementation science, values-based implementation
Garnett, Bernice: Catamount Community Schools Collaborative: University-School-Community Partnerships
Faculty Name: Bernice Garnett, ScD
Research Project Title: Catamount Community Schools Collaborative: University-School-Community Partnerships
Description: In this mixed methods project, we will focus on sustainable and mutually transformative structures, policies, and practices of the university-assisted community school model to support rural community school implementation.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral program: Interest, experience with K-12 and University partnership models. Interest, experience with educational policy analysis and community schools. Methods: mixed methods, implementation science, values-based implementation
Killeen, Kieran: Family Spending on Supplemental Education Activities for Children
Faculty Name: Kieran Killeen, PhD
Research Project Title: Family Spending on Supplemental Education Activities for Children
Description: In this collaborative project with Tom Downes (Tufts University), we seek to identify the determinants of family spending on enrichment activities like sports, tutoring and lessons. We specifically examine whether local school conditions including spending levels influence family spending behaviors.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral program: Interest, experience with K-12 education issues particularly education policy analysis. Methods: quantitative analytic methods, data science, econometrics. (Not accepting PhD students for AY25-26)
McCluskey, Matthew: Education Reform and the Rise of Education Consultants
Faculty Name: Matthew McCluskey, PhD
Research Project Title: Education Reform and the Rise of Education Consultants
Description: In this mixed-methods project, we explore the understudied phenomenon of educational consulting - who the stakeholders are, what services they provide, and their potential impacts (or lack thereof) to educational policy and practice.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral program: Interest, experience with PK-12 public education. Methods: Case study, interviews, content analysis, discourse analysis, Critical Policy Analysis, ethnographic observation, document analysis. Strong writing and organizational skills.
Faculty Name: McCluskey, Matthew
Research Project Title: Vermont Rural Education Hub
Description: Our multi-method study has three aims: 1) develop robust understanding of the state of public education in Vermont; 2.) build a Vermont educational leadership and policy research hub at ¶¶Òõ̽̽ and 3.) connect and support rural educational leaders across the state.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral program: Interest, experience with rural PK-12 schools, districts, or Unions. Methods: Case study, interviews, focus groups, document analysis. Strong writing and organizational skills.
McCluskey, Matthew: Vermont Rural Education Hub
Faculty Name: Matthew McCluskey, PhD
Research Project Title: Vermont Rural Education Hub
Description: Our multi-method study has three aims: 1) develop robust understanding of the state of public education in Vermont; 2.) build a Vermont educational leadership and policy research hub at ¶¶Òõ̽̽ and 3.) connect and support rural educational leaders across the state.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral program: Interest, experience with rural PK-12 schools, districts, or Unions. Methods: Case study, interviews, focus groups, document analysis. Strong writing and organizational skills.
Sutherland, Daniella: Vermont Rural Education Hub
Faculty Name: Daniella Sutherland, PhD
Research Project Title: Vermont Rural Education Hub
Description: Our multi-method study has three aims: 1) develop robust understanding of the state of public education in Vermont; 2.) build a Vermont educational leadership and policy research hub at ¶¶Òõ̽̽ and 3.) connect and support rural educational leaders across the state.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral program: Interest, experience with rural PK-12 schools, districts, or Unions. Methods: Case study, interviews, focus groups, document analysis. Strong writing and organizational skills.
Sutherland, Daniella: Educational Equity and Rural School-Community Partnerships
Faculty Name: Daniella Sutherland, PhD
Research Project Title: Educational Equity and Rural School-Community Partnerships
Description: In this qualitative, improvement-science study, we will investigate how to develop, facilitate, and support rural school-community partnerships that improve educational equity.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral program: Interest; experience with community partnerships, PK-12 systems, and/or social justice work. Methods: Improvement Science cycles, interviews, focus groups, descriptive data analysis. Strong communication and organizational skills.
Williams, Brit: Citations for Equity (C4E)
Faculty Name: Brit Williams, PhD
Research Project Title: Citations for Equity (C4E)
Description: This research team explores how campus policies, practices, and norms impede the advancement of students and scholars of color in higher education contexts. We focus directly on citational practices, ethics, and culture to investigate how faculty socialize and thus lead students down paths to reify systemic injustice in academic publishing, promotion, and tenure processes using mixed-methods research approaches.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral program: Students interested in academic recruitment and retention, pipelines and pathways to academic leadership and campus policy-making around tenure and promotion, an awareness of qualitative and quantitative data approaches, and strong writing skills are required.
Williams, Brit: The Personal is Necropolitical (TPN)
Faculty Name: Brit Williams, PhD
Research Project Title: The Personal is Necropolitical (TPN)
Description: This research team is dedicated to making a difference in understanding the connections between education and health. We examine the impacts of campus, state, and federal policies, norms, and practices on the short and long-term health of the college-going population of those employed in educational environments (Pre-K-16+), and we co-construct interventions to counter these growing disparities.
Hours Per Week: 10
Student Skills Required Please note, methodological interest; training will occur in the doctoral programStudents with a strong interest in the nexus of education and public health, academic research/ writing, descriptive statistics, qualitative interviewing, and data visualization are strongly encouraged to apply.
