Antero Garcia

Associate Professor of Education, Stanford University

Dr. Garcia is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and Vice President of the National Council of Teachers of English. His research explores the possibilities of speculative imagination and healing in educational research. Prior to completing his Ph.D., Garcia was an English teacher at a public high school in South Central Los Angeles. He has authored or edited more than a dozen books about the possibilities of literacies, play, and civics in transforming schooling in America. His recent books include All Around the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology and Civics for the World to Come: Committing to Democracy in Every Classroom. Antero currently co-edits La Cuenta, an online publication centering the voices and perspectives of individuals labeled undocumented in the U.S. Antero received his Ph.D. in the Urban Schooling division of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Nicole Mirra

Associate Professor of Urban Teacher Education Learning and Teaching, Rutgers, New Brunswick

Dr. Mirra is constantly striving to bring the two fields of literacy and youth civic engagement together in ways that bring about more social change and justice in classrooms and society. As she began her career teaching high school English in Brooklyn, New York, she was struck by the structures of inequity that were perpetuated in classrooms and was inspired to leverage critical literacy practices as a force to challenge them. Rather than focus on teaching content alone, Mirra believes that content should be used as a vehicle to teach students to lift their voices in public life. Propelled by her love of teaching young people, she now partners with youth as co-researchers in her work and co-designs studies focused on the issues they care about. She aims to shift conversations in the field of literacy to focus on civic engagement and change rather than merely skills and standardized testing. Mirra also incorporates digital media into her teaching and research to bring together students across the nation and open up conversations about the differences and commonalities that exist across U.S. communities.

Mirra pursued English during her undergraduate years and went on to receive two Master’s degrees in English Education and Education Policy. She later pursued her Ph.D. in Urban Schooling. In addition to engaging in research and teaching courses in English Education, Mirra works with the New York City Department of Education to analyze middle school debate programming. Mirra also participates in the National Writing Project (NWP), which works with teachers across the country to encourage civically engaged writing with young people. In partnership with NWP and Teachers College Press, she published a book on what it means to bring empathy into classrooms through a more critical and civic way. She considers her efforts with students to bring more equity and justice to civic life to be her life’s work.

Worldbuilders

Tony Patrick

World-builder, Immersive Director, NYU professor, and founder of the Tenfold Gaming Initiative.

Tony Patrick is a World-builder, Immersive Director, NYU professor, and founder of the Tenfold Gaming Initiative—which encourages underrepresented students to embark on game design/tech careers. As an author/director of numerous screenplays, documentaries, and published comics (Batman & The Signal, X’ed), Tony’s penchant for creating fictional worlds has catapulted him into future-facing residencies sponsored by Sundance New Frontier, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Future Histories Studio, Verizon 5G and Ryot, laying the foundation for a new XR format termed Experiential Comics. When he isn’t catalyzing community visions and new prototypes with artists, entrepreneurs, technologists, institutions (ranging from Guggenheim to TED) in his Community World-building initiative, The (Re)Writers Room—he’s building his latest venture: the School of Lived Experience—an artist based mindfulness platform that allows communities to heal, & build together.

Errol King

Creative Technologist, Educator, and Wellness Coach

Errol King is a Creative Technologist, Educator, and Wellness Coach whose path has always been guided by curiosity and mindfulness. He began his career leading communications and technology strategy as Director of New Media for 1199SEIU, the largest local union in the United States. Here he focused on building and deploying mobilization technologies for social and political action. Drawn to the maker movement, Errol then co-founded Hidden Level Games—an indie studio empowering young people to create and share digital games globally. This work led him to teach game design and programming around the world, where he discovered the profound impact that community-based creativity can have on personal growth. Here he developed a first of kind coding platform that was used by many youth serving organizations including Black Girls Code, Boys and Girls Club, Cornell K-12 and more.

During nearly a decade at Google, Errol developed pioneering education initiatives like Code Next and Tech Exchange, while spearheading AI-driven creative projects, including The Search for Belonging with jon a. powell, Body Movement Language with Bill T. Jones and TextFX with Lupe Fiasco. It was here at Google’s Creative Lab that he honed his love of combining creative technologies with collective envisioning and problem solving.

Since leaving Google he has transitioned to AI consulting, education and wellness coaching. Errol remains committed to bridging technology, creativity, and spirituality to foster healing and collective transformation.

Conveners

Candice M. Lowe Swift

Associate Professor of Anthropology, Africana Studies, and International Studies

Candice Lowe Swift is associate professor of anthropology and serves on the steering committees of Africana Studies and International Studies at Vassar College. Her research focuses on multiculturalism and heritage in Mauritius and on the relationships between diasporans from Africa, India, China, Europe, and the Middle East within the context of the Indian Ocean. She has served in the roles of liaison to president for race and inclusion and advisor to the College on Inclusion and Engaged Pluralism for the past 6 years, during which time she became a co-principal investigator on a Mellon Foundation grant to address Vassar’s interest in becoming a more welcoming and generative learning community for all, with a concentration on students from historically underrepresented groups on campus. The successful funding of the Mellon proposal allowed Vassar College to launch the Engaged Pluralism Initiative, which Candice directed until December 2020. She also initiated, co-founded, and directed Summer Immersion in the Liberal Arts, which was designed primarily to serve first-generation and lower income students.

Credit

Grace Adams Ward ’24/Vassar College

Eréndira Rueda

Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Latin American and Latinx Studies

Eréndira Rueda is associate professor of sociology and the director of the Latin American and Latinx Studies multidisciplinary program at Vassar College. Her primary areas of research and teaching are the sociology of education, immigration, and childhoods. She has been a key leader in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging work at Vassar for the past decade. She has been a member of the President’s Diversity Council, co-chair of the Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid, a founding member of the Engaged Pluralism Initiative’s working group focused on inclusive pedagogies and curriculum development, and a Core Team member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Grand Challenges Program. She served as the co-chair of the Committee on Inclusion and Equity for 6 years, a presidential advisory committee tasked with identifying college practices and campus issues that require a clearer articulation of the institution’s stance on diversity, equity, and inclusion. She has also been an active mentor and dedicated member of the Advisory Board for the Vassar Transitions Program, which serves first-generation, low-income, and/or undocumented and DACA students. She has directed the Transitions Research Team since 2017, which trains first-generation and low-income (FGLI) Vassar students in participatory action research and provides college administrators, offices, and programs with recommendations that help foster a sense of belonging among FGLI students on campus.

Alison Cook-Sather

Ph.D., Mary Katharine Woodworth Professor of Education at Bryn Mawr College and Director of the Teaching and Learning Institute at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges

Alison has developed internationally recognized programs that position students and teachers as pedagogical partners, most notably Students as Learners and Teachers (SaLT), which has served as a model for numerous other institutions around the world. Author or co-author of over 150 articles and book chapters and ten books, including Pedagogical Partnerships: A How-To Guide for Faculty, Students, and Academic Developers in Higher Education and Co-Creating Equitable Teaching and Learning: Structuring Student Voice into Higher Education, Alison has spoken or consulted on pedagogical partnership work in 13 countries and served as a visiting scholar at a number of institutions, including University of Cambridge in England. Alison is founding editor of Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education, founding co-editor of International Journal for Students as Partners and the recipient of a number of awards, including the Alumni Excellence in Education Award from the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Learn more about Alison’s work at alisoncooksather.com.

Caleb Elfenbein

Professor of History and Religious Studies at Grinnell College and Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, past director of the Center for the Humanities

Caleb studies how communities in different times and places think about, and debate, human welfare in the context of collective life. His research has explored this theme and related topics in modern colonial and postcolonial Muslim communities, with work appearing in the Journal of the American Academic of Religion, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, and The Muslim World, among other venues. More recently, he has turned to exploring human welfare and community life in the United States, a shift that began with the development of Mapping Islamophobia, an on-line digital humanities tool presenting interactive, visualized date on Islamophobic incidents and their effects on the participation of American Muslims in public life, and that continued with Fear in Our Hearts: What Islamophobia Tells Us about America (NYU Press). Most recently, he has been studying the intersections of race and historical understanding in American public life. In his administrative work, Caleb draws on insights from his teaching and research to create opportunities for colleagues and students to develop meaningfully as people and professionals.