Spencer Foundation Recognizes Mehta and Kieffer for Scholarly Work

The Spencer Foundation recently recognized Assistant Professor Jal Mehta and Michael Kieffer, Ed.M.'06, Ed.D.'09, with the 2010 Exemplary Dissertation Award, which identifies a young researcher's outstanding scholarly work.

"I was extremely honored for this work to be recognized by the Spencer Foundation," said Mehta. "I particularly want to thank my adviser, Sandy Jencks, who supported this project from the beginning and gave me line by line edits as it developed, and my parents, whose passion for rigorous and thought-provoking education is a model and inspiration for me.

"I also want to thank the selection committee for honoring this somewhat unconventional work, and I hope it will encourage future doctoral students to take on big questions about the shape and values of our educational system," he continued. "I was really fortunate to have people who encouraged me to resist the idea that a dissertation has to be a highly specialized project, and I hope that we will provide the same support for our own students."

Mehta's dissertation, The Transformation of American Educational Policy, 1980-2001: Ideas and the Rise of Accountability Politics, explains how standards and accountability became the prevailing bipartisan approach to education reform, trumping the resistance of teachers' unions, long-standing traditions of local control, and objections from both the left and right.

Keiffer, who won the Spencer Dissertation Fellowship last year, also received an 2010 Exemplary Dissertation Award for his dissertation, The Development of Morphological Awareness and Vocabulary Knowledge in Adolescent Language Minority Learners and Their Classmates, which examines two specific English skills considered to be important in LM learners' language development during early adolescence-morphological awareness (i.e., understanding of complex words as combinations of meaningful units) and vocabulary knowledge (i.e., knowledge of word meanings).

"I am deeply honored to be recognized by Spencer Foundation and the prominent scholars on the awards committee. I certainly could not have done it without the extraordinary mentoring of my advisor, [Associate Professor] Nonie Lesaux," Kieffer said. "I also owe a great deal to my amazing committee members, [Professors] Catherine Snow and John Willett, as well as the brilliant students at HGSE that I was lucky enough to work with."

Additionally, three doctoral students - Malia Villegas, Ed.M.'05; Liliana Garces, Ed.M.'06; and John Papay, Ed.M.'05 - have won Spencer Dissertation Fellowships. The Dissertation Fellowship Program supports relevant research dedicated to the improvement of education. These $25,000 fellowships support individuals whose dissertations show potential for bringing fresh and constructive perspectives to the history, theory, or practice of formal or informal education in the world.