To contact the SIG, please send an email to individual board members or email the SIG at cesjsig at gmail.com. To be included on our listserv, please email one of the communications co-chairs. To share job postings with CESJ members, please post them on our Facebook page.

Nini Hayes
Co-Chair
Nini Hayes is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Education and affiliated faculty for the Education for Social Justice program at Western Washington University. Their teaching, learning, and research is centered on equity, justice in education, and the laboring of critical and justice-centered faculty of color, their work both within and beyond the academy. Prior to graduate school, they were a former fifth grade teacher and environmental educator. They have been both a participant and planner for both the CESJ Graduate Student Forum and Early Career Scholars Forum.
Co-Chair
Nini Hayes is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Education and affiliated faculty for the Education for Social Justice program at Western Washington University. Their teaching, learning, and research is centered on equity, justice in education, and the laboring of critical and justice-centered faculty of color, their work both within and beyond the academy. Prior to graduate school, they were a former fifth grade teacher and environmental educator. They have been both a participant and planner for both the CESJ Graduate Student Forum and Early Career Scholars Forum.

Aja Reynolds
Co-Chair
Aja D. Reynolds is an activist-scholar, artist, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Urban Education and Critical Race Studies in the Teacher Education Department at Wayne State University. She has been part of the CESJ family since 2016, which has contributed to her personal and professional growth. Her scholarly work has focused on Black girl fugitivity and the geographies of Black girlhood to examine the school to prison nexus. Additionally, she organizes nationally with organizations like Education for Liberation to support teachers, youth, and community organizations to develop more equitable educational structures for marginalized youth.
Co-Chair
Aja D. Reynolds is an activist-scholar, artist, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Urban Education and Critical Race Studies in the Teacher Education Department at Wayne State University. She has been part of the CESJ family since 2016, which has contributed to her personal and professional growth. Her scholarly work has focused on Black girl fugitivity and the geographies of Black girlhood to examine the school to prison nexus. Additionally, she organizes nationally with organizations like Education for Liberation to support teachers, youth, and community organizations to develop more equitable educational structures for marginalized youth.

derria byrd
Fiscal Co-Chair
derria byrd is an assistant professor at Marquette University. As a critical scholar of higher education, she draws on sociology of education, organizational studies, and critical theory to examine the institutional forces that hinder and facilitate progress toward equity for people from marginalized social groups. She focuses on how the dispositions, behaviors, and practices of colleges and universities and the institutional actors that represent them exacerbate and/or interrupt marginalization in higher education contexts. Her current research centers the lived experiences of first-generation academics—that is, former first-generation college students who now hold full-time roles as faculty members, administrators, or other higher education professionals. As an educator, derria aims to help students see the world around them through critical eyes and to ask questions about justice, history, knowledge, and lived experiences they haven't been exposed to--often because of intentional, culturally embedded structures and process. derria hopes this critical reflection will help them to act by engaging in justice-oriented practice in the educational spaces they go on to inhabit.
Fiscal Co-Chair
derria byrd is an assistant professor at Marquette University. As a critical scholar of higher education, she draws on sociology of education, organizational studies, and critical theory to examine the institutional forces that hinder and facilitate progress toward equity for people from marginalized social groups. She focuses on how the dispositions, behaviors, and practices of colleges and universities and the institutional actors that represent them exacerbate and/or interrupt marginalization in higher education contexts. Her current research centers the lived experiences of first-generation academics—that is, former first-generation college students who now hold full-time roles as faculty members, administrators, or other higher education professionals. As an educator, derria aims to help students see the world around them through critical eyes and to ask questions about justice, history, knowledge, and lived experiences they haven't been exposed to--often because of intentional, culturally embedded structures and process. derria hopes this critical reflection will help them to act by engaging in justice-oriented practice in the educational spaces they go on to inhabit.
Shanyce L. Campbell
Fiscal Co-Chair Dr. Shanyce L. Campbell is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Urban Education, where she currently teaches quantitative methods, mixed-methods and, social policy and urban education. Dr. Campbell’s research focuses on understanding how policies and practices influence access to quality learning opportunities for students marginalized by the educational system. Employing quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods, she explores various institutional factors associated with advancing marginalized students’ opportunities to learn including instructional quality, school-community partnerships, and curriculum. |

Ruth Lopez
Communications Co-Chair
Ruth M. López, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies in the College of Education at the University of Houston. She earned a PhD in Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) in 2015. Her research agenda centers on examining the educational experiences, opportunities, and outcomes of students of color along the P-20 pipeline—specifically focusing on Latinx and immigrant students. She examines immigration policy and its implications on education, where she aims to contribute to scholarship that illuminates how immigration policy intersects with education in order to identify policies and practices that can remove the barriers that immigrant students and families face in both K-12 and higher education institutions. She was named a 2019 American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) Fellow.
Communications Co-Chair
Ruth M. López, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies in the College of Education at the University of Houston. She earned a PhD in Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder) in 2015. Her research agenda centers on examining the educational experiences, opportunities, and outcomes of students of color along the P-20 pipeline—specifically focusing on Latinx and immigrant students. She examines immigration policy and its implications on education, where she aims to contribute to scholarship that illuminates how immigration policy intersects with education in order to identify policies and practices that can remove the barriers that immigrant students and families face in both K-12 and higher education institutions. She was named a 2019 American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) Fellow.

Jenn Jackson Whitley
Communications Co-Chair
Jennifer Jackson Whitley is a hybrid teacher at Athens Community Career Academy in Athens, Georgia, where she splits her time teaching high school English/Language Arts classes for Clarke County School District and dual enrollment English courses for Athens Technical College. Her scholarship is grounded in critical feminist theories and methodologies, using narrative and poetic analyses to investigate the experiences of rural womxn educators. Her classroom research employs antiracist, dialogical, and critical practices to investigate power, social justice, and identity through representation in diverse texts. She is currently in her thirteenth year teaching, with experience ranging from middle school to college-level classroom spaces.
Communications Co-Chair
Jennifer Jackson Whitley is a hybrid teacher at Athens Community Career Academy in Athens, Georgia, where she splits her time teaching high school English/Language Arts classes for Clarke County School District and dual enrollment English courses for Athens Technical College. Her scholarship is grounded in critical feminist theories and methodologies, using narrative and poetic analyses to investigate the experiences of rural womxn educators. Her classroom research employs antiracist, dialogical, and critical practices to investigate power, social justice, and identity through representation in diverse texts. She is currently in her thirteenth year teaching, with experience ranging from middle school to college-level classroom spaces.

Elizabeth Mendoza
Program Co-Chair
Elizabeth Mendoza is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, where she is working on co-creating a professional development framework that fosters equity in math classrooms alongside teachers, community members and researchers. Her scholarship intersects several research traditions, including learning sciences, sociocultural psychology, critical race theory, and participatory action research to support educators in developing practices that challenge unexamined ideologies and re-imagining new practices toward transformative ends. Elizabeth is the co-editor of Power, Equity and (Re)Design: Bridging learning and critical theories in learning ecologies for youth.
Program Co-Chair
Elizabeth Mendoza is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, where she is working on co-creating a professional development framework that fosters equity in math classrooms alongside teachers, community members and researchers. Her scholarship intersects several research traditions, including learning sciences, sociocultural psychology, critical race theory, and participatory action research to support educators in developing practices that challenge unexamined ideologies and re-imagining new practices toward transformative ends. Elizabeth is the co-editor of Power, Equity and (Re)Design: Bridging learning and critical theories in learning ecologies for youth.

Youmna Deiri
Program Co-Chair
Youmna Deiri, Ph.D., is a Dean’s Diversity Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Teaching and Learning at Ohio State University. Her scholarship focuses racialized and multilingual community literacies. Her research methodologies are radically intimate, bilingual, qualitative and ethnographic, with an eye toward issues of racialization, language, and immigration related to teacher education. Her teaching experience is transnational. She has taught in Turkey, Syria, and the United States. Youmna’s work straddles the intimate boundaries of a scholarship that is deeply personal and is informed by her being born in Saudi Arabia and growing up in Aleppo, Syria to Syrian parents, as well as her own immigration stories. Beyond her scholarly interests, Youmna is an avid language learner, language teacher, and an experimental poet.
Program Co-Chair
Youmna Deiri, Ph.D., is a Dean’s Diversity Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Teaching and Learning at Ohio State University. Her scholarship focuses racialized and multilingual community literacies. Her research methodologies are radically intimate, bilingual, qualitative and ethnographic, with an eye toward issues of racialization, language, and immigration related to teacher education. Her teaching experience is transnational. She has taught in Turkey, Syria, and the United States. Youmna’s work straddles the intimate boundaries of a scholarship that is deeply personal and is informed by her being born in Saudi Arabia and growing up in Aleppo, Syria to Syrian parents, as well as her own immigration stories. Beyond her scholarly interests, Youmna is an avid language learner, language teacher, and an experimental poet.
Malayka Neith Cornejo
Graduate Student Representative
Eric Washington
Graduate Student Representative
Graduate Student Representative
Eric Washington
Graduate Student Representative
Many thanks to past Board members for their hard work and dedication!