Education

Expanding Minority Doctorate Pipeline Began with Facebook Group

THE BIRMINGHAM TIMES — Although primarily intended for doctoral-degree seekers and holders who are people of color or first-generation, the private page has members from various ethnic groups in countries beyond the United States, including Canada, China, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates. About 70 percent are women.

Published

6 years ago

March 25, 2019

Oakland Post

By LaMont Jones, Diverse Education

LaShonda Horrison-Gurley said she “didn’t know whether to laugh, to cry or break out in a praise dance” when she successfully defended her dissertation last week, but the doctor of education earner knew she was grateful for critical support along the way – including from a social media group created two years ago to support Black and first-generation students seeking doctoral degrees.

That’s why Horrison-Gurley, in the tradition of others before her, shared her good news with the more than 12,100 members of PhinisheD/FinishEdD, a Facebook group page launched in January 2017 by Dr. Daniel Jean, executive director of the Educational Opportunity Fund Program and Academic Development at Montclair State University.

The road to earning a doctor of education or a doctor of philosophy is arduous, a journey on which “you need support, you need encouragement,” said Horrison-Gurley, a wife and mother of three who once stopped out of her education leadership and management program at Capella University due to family issues and felt like giving up near the end because of financial challenges and programmatic policy changes.

“I ran across the Facebook page on somebody else’s profile about a year and a half ago and decided to check it out, and joined,” said Horrison-Gurley, who works as director of multicultural development and a deputy Title IX coordinator at Ohio Northern University. “I’m a first-generation, and nobody else in my family has navigated this before. And going to school online is a different journey from brick and mortar. I felt I wasn’t alone, having that support group there rooting me on to finish.”

Dr. Daniel Jean

In that regard, PhinisheD/FinishEdD is doing exactly what Jean envisioned. Although primarily intended for doctoral-degree seekers and holders who are people of color or first-generation, the private page has members from various ethnic groups in countries beyond the United States, including Canada, China, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates. About 70 percent are women.

“I noticed others using Facebook as a toy, not a tool,” said Jean. “I set it up as a motivation and resource page, and by the end of the first month I had 1,000 members. I started updating it more and posting pictures, and it just took off and has become an unbelievable network that helps people stay on task and be motivated.”

The page is a forum for soliciting and offering specific advice, seeking and providing encouragement and celebrating milestones up to and through degree completion. As added motivation, new graduates usually tag #WhoGotNext when posting their picture and announcement.

“People develop accountability partners through the page,” said Jean, who earned an Ed.D. in higher education leadership at Seton Hall University.

Observing need and growing demand for support among doctoral students, Jean expanded the mission of PhinisheD/FinishEdD to include a summit for doctoral students each semester. The next one, March 30 in New York City, is on track to have 100 attendees, quadrupling attendance last fall, he said.

Jean, the U.S.-born child of Haitian immigrants, attended a magnet school in New Jersey. When he was in the eighth grade, his father died and his grades plummeted.

But thanks to a program for low-income, highly motivated students – the very program he now directs – Jean eventually got his groove back and earned a bachelor’s degree in public communications at Ramapo College of New Jersey and a master’s degree in higher education counseling at Montclair State University.

He decided to earn a doctoral degree, and credits participation in a conference for minority doctoral students through SREB as a tremendous support. That experience inspired him to create new pathways to doctoral degrees for underrepresented students like him, including his first doctoral summit at Montclair State in fall 2016.

Jean has given more than 600 keynote speeches, presentations and trainings across the nation, primarily for graduate students. His mission, he said, is inspired by Dr. Ansley Abraham and Abraham’s work as founding director of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) State Doctoral Scholars Program in Atlanta.

Now in its 26th year, the program presents various initiatives, including hosting the largest gathering of minority doctoral students in the nation. It has directly supported nearly 1,700 scholars, with about 80 percent of its nearly 1,000 graduates working in education, said Abraham.

Those alums include Jean, whose passion and efforts to create diverse communities of scholars and increase inclusion in academia were praised by Abraham.

“I love what he’s doing,” said Abraham. “We need a whole lot more Daniel Jeans out there, understanding what the issues are and really trying to push this system in a way it’s not used to being pushed. He’s been very, very successful.”

Dr. Renetta Garrison Tull, associate vice provost for strategic initiatives in the graduate school of University of Maryland Baltimore County’s College of Engineering and Information Technology, met Jean at an SREB conference. She was so impressed with his presentation that the school began bringing him to campus for mentoring in residence and other initiatives.

His innovative methods of mentoring were so helpful at the graduate level that the university has had him also work with undergraduates, she said.

“He has a personal testimony that resonates with students,” said Tull. “He infuses a lot of pop culture, which resonates with students, and he is powerful and affirming.”

This article originally appeared in The Birmingham Times.

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Five Years After COVID-19 Began, a Struggling Child Care Workforce Faces New Threats

Five years ago, as COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures began, most early educators continued to work in person, risking their own health and that of their families. “Early educators were called essential, but they weren’t provided with the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe,” said CSCCE Executive Director Lea Austin. “There were no special shopping hours or ways for them to access safety materials in those early and scary months of the pandemic, leaving them to compete with other shoppers. One state even advised them to wear trash bags if they couldn’t find PPE.”

Published

6 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

UC Berkeley photo.

UC Berkeley News

In the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic alone, 166,000 childcare jobs were lost across the nation. Significant recovery didn’t begin until the advent of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Child Care Stabilization funds in April 2021.

Today, child care employment is back to slightly above pre-pandemic levels, but job growth has remained sluggish at 1.4% since ARPA funding allocations ended in October 2023, according to analysis by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at UC Berkeley. In the last six months, childcare employment has hovered around 1.1 million.

Yet more than two million American parents report job changes due to problems accessing child care. Why does the childcare sector continue to face a workforce crisis that has predated the pandemic? Inadequate compensation drives high turnover rates and workforce shortages that predate the pandemic. Early childhood educators are skilled professionals; many have more than 15 years of experience and a college degree, but their compensation does not reflect their expertise. The national median hourly wage is $13.07, and only a small proportion of early educators receive benefits.

And now a new round of challenges is about to hit childcare. The low wages paid in early care and education result in 43% of early educator families depending on at least one public support program, such as Medicaid or food stamps, both of which are threatened by potential federal funding cuts. Job numbers will likely fall as many early childhood educators need to find jobs with healthcare benefits or better pay.

In addition, one in five child care workers are immigrants, and executive orders driving deportation and ICE raids will further devastate the entire early care and education system. These stresses are part of the historical lack of respect the workforce faces, despite all they contribute to children, families, and the economy.

The economic impact was equally dire. Even as many providers tried to remain open to ensure their financial security, the combination of higher costs to meet safety protocols and lower revenue from fewer children enrolled led to job losses, increased debt, and program closures.

Eventually, the federal government responded with historic short-term investments through ARPA, which stabilized childcare programs. These funds provided money to increase pay or provide financial relief to early educators to improve their income and well-being. The childcare sector began to slowly recover. Larger job gains were made in 2022 and 2023, and as of November 2023, national job numbers had slightly surpassed pre-pandemic levels, though state and metro areas continued to fluctuate.

Many states have continued to support the workforce after ARPA funding expired in late 2024. In Maine, a salary supplement initiative has provided monthly stipends of $240-$540 to educators working in licensed home- or center-based care, based on education and experience, making it one of the nation’s leaders in its support of early educators. Early educators say the program has enabled them to raise wages, which has improved staff retention. Yet now, Governor Janet Mills is considering cutting the stipend program in half.

“History shows that once an emergency is perceived to have passed, public funding that supports the early care and education workforce is pulled,” says Austin. “You can’t build a stable childcare workforce and system without consistent public investment and respect for all that early educators contribute.”

The Center for the Study of Childcare Employment is the source of this story.

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Activism

District Delegates to State Democratic Party Central Committee Meeting Celebrate Election Victory

Delegates and elected officials were excited for the future of the Democratic Party and making its focus on 1) creating more affordable housing, 2) supporting education, 3) helping working families, and 4) protecting the environment and addressing climate change, with a focus on practical and realistic policy efforts that could have a meaningful impact.

Published

6 days ago

March 23, 2025

Oakland Post

Front row: Megan Imperial, Genice Jacobs, Bobbi Lopez, Courtney Welch, Janani Ramachandran, Hercules Councilmember Dilli Bhattarai, Sarah Bell, Laura Babitt, Ashlee Jemmott, and Shawn Danino. Rear row: Ben Gould, Sam Davis, Victor Flores, Zac Bowling, Nate Hanson, Teddy Gray King, Cathy Adams, Neil Tsutsui, Sam Gould, Lauren Wilson, and Nick Pilch. Courtesy photo.

By Ben Gould
Special to The Post

Winners of the February 2025 Assembly District Election Meetings (ADEM) for Assembly Districts 14 and 18 met on Sunday, March 16 to discuss priorities for the California Democratic Party convention in Anaheim coming up in May.

The winners for Assembly District 18 are Genice Jacobs, Bobbi Lopez, Shawn Danino, Ben Gould, Zac Bowling, Nate Hanson, Cathy Adams, Sam Gould, Lauren Wilson, Ashlee Jemmott, and former Oakland School Board Director Sam Davis.

The winners for Assembly District 14 are: Sarah Bell, Neil Tsutsui, Hercules Councilmember Dilli Bhattarai, former Berkeley School Board Director Laura Babitt, former Piedmont Mayor Teddy Gray King, and former Albany Mayor Nick Pilch.

They were joined by Oakland Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, Emeryville Councilmember Courtney Welch, and BART Director Victor Flores to help celebrate their victory.

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Activism

Actor, Philanthropist Blair Underwood Visits Bay Area, Kicks Off Literacy Program in ‘New Oakland’ Initiative

These community activations were coordinated with the San Francisco-based non-profit program “Room to Read.” Ray said he is also donating his time to read and take pictures with students to encourage their engagement and to inspire them to read more. The inspirational book “Clifford Ray Saves the Day” highlights Clifford Ray’s true story of saving a dolphin.

Published

1 month ago

February 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Blair Underwood (left) and Barbara Lee (right). Courtesy photo.

By Paul Cobb
New Oakland Series
Opinion Part 3

The Post mentioned three weeks ago that a number of our local luminaries were coming together to support the “New Oakland” movement. As this current national administration continues to eliminate our “legacy” institutional policies and programs left and right, most communities find themselves beyond “frozen” in fear.

Well, esteemed actor, long-time Bay Area supporter, and philanthropist Blair Underwood returned to Oakland this week to speak with city leaders, community trust agents, students, the Oakland Post, and local celebrities alike to continue his “New Oakland” initiative.

This week, he kicked off his “Guess Who’s Coming to Read” literacy program in some of Oakland’s middle schools. Clifford Ray, who played the center position of the 1975 World Champion Golden State Warriors, donated close to 1,000 books. Ray’s fellow teammate Charles “The Hopper” Dudley also gave Converse sneakers to students.

Underwood also spent quality time with the Oakland Ballers ownership group and visited the amazing Raimondi Park West Oakland community revitalization site. In the 1996 TV film Soul of the Game, Underwood played the role of the legendary first Black Major League Baseball player Jackie Robinson and commended the Ballers owners.

“This group of sports enthusiasts/ philanthropists needs to be applauded for their human capital investment and their financial capital investment,” Underwood said. “Truly putting their money and passion to work,” Underwood said.

Underwood was also inspired by mayoral candidate Barbara Lee’s open-minded invitation to bring public-private partnership opportunities to Oakland.

Underwood said he wants to “reinforce the importance of ‘collaborative activism’ among those most marginalized by non-empathic leadership. We must ‘act out’ our discomfort with passionate intentions to create healthy change.”