Morgridge Means More Than Ever

Dr. Fusco was a corporate attorney for 14 years before he found his passion: special education and advocacy. In a recent interview, he said “if you see people as humans, and don't see people based on their disability, there's just this profound potential to change the way we collectively exist as people.” This drive to change not just individual perspectives, but the systems that support them, inspired Stephen to pursue his PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies.

Today, Dr. Fusco is challenging systems to improve lives. He was appointed to the Colorado Special Education Advisory Committee (CSEAC), providing policy guidance to the State on issues relating to special education. He serves as Corporate Counsel for HopSkipDrive, which examines transportation’s role in equitable access to education and advocates for transportation to be viewed as a service as important as any in special education.

Dr. Fusco is a relentless warrior for equity, an engaged alumnx, and a champion of change.

"You're not here just to make incremental change - You're here to disrupt the system that’s creating the inequities that are glaring in education!"

- Stephen Fusco PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, 2021. Lawyer. Advocate. Educator.

 

Dr. Stephen Fusco: PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, 2021. Lawyer. Advocate. Educator.

After more than two decades in education, Gerardo Muñoz (Colorado's 2021 Teacher of the Year) has learned that diversity and community are essential. In tandem, they allow us to create educational spaces that help students and teachers alike to thrive. To both celebrate diversity and build community, Gerardo relies on a technique employed on for centuries: storytelling.

In the classroom, sharing lived experiences can not only inspire new perspectives but promote self-worth. Stories, Mr. Muñoz says, help us to build communities of “mutual support, interest, and care.” They help us to validate one another and, oftentimes, ourselves. This is true not only for students, but for teachers who – we may sometimes forget – are human, too. Through storytelling, we can collectively find “our biggest strength.”

For Mr. Muñoz, this is looking across a classroom, seeing people with different backgrounds, and saying “it’s good to be who you are.”

We all have diverse backgrounds and “that’s our biggest strength, the fact that we can look across a classroom and see people from way different backgrounds. The more we celebrate and uplift that and say it’s good to be who you are” the more learning spaces can be special.

Gerardo Muñoz earned his M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from MCE and is pursuing his PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Education. Muñoz teaches at the Denver Center for International Studies and hosts “Too Dope Teachers and a Mic” with co-creator Kevin Adams.

Joi Lin was searching for a "knowledge community” in gifted education – a place where she could meaningfully connect. In 2018, she found it at MCE. She met her future mentor, Dr. Norma Hafenstein (Daniel L. Ritchie Endowed Chair in Gifted Education and Professor in MCE’s Teaching and Learning Sciences Department) at a conference. A chance meeting, quick coffee, and great discussion led Joi Lin to embark on her next journey: she joined MCE’s Curriculum & Instruction PhD program mid-cohort. Joi Lin found the place she wanted to be, supported and challenged by "an impressive group of educators passionate about gifted education and supporting neuro-diverse students.”

“Morgridge is not a monolith - it has a collective identity. It brings together diverse people from many nations who identify with many communities" - Joi Lin (Doctoral student, Vice President of MCE's Student Association, & Graduate Assistant)

Joi Lin: Doctoral student, Vice President of MCE's Student Association, & Graduate Assistant

In 2012, Khara Croswaite Brindle earned her master’s at MCE. In 2021, she returned as an Adjunct Professor in Counseling Psychology. Over the course of her career, she has made significant and positive impacts in Colorado and beyond. Khara has established a non-profit, authored best-selling books, and more. Recently, she gave a TEDx Talk: The Burden of Busyness. Her work has helped patients and peers alike make innovative and research-based progress on issues ranging from suicide prevention to work-life balance.

Eleven years ago, Dr. Janiece Mackey started a non-profit. As a bilingual educator and counselor, she “was sick and tired of seeing [her] lived experiences of systemic racism through the bodies and minds and souls of the youth [she] was working with.” Homelessness, bullying, and racism were just a few of the compounding challenges that she saw pushing children out of the educational space. She wanted to help and, in doing so, hoped that the children would "see themselves in the person that was helping them.”

In 2020, Dr. Mackey completed her Ph.D. in Higher Education with an emphasis in Public Policy and Curriculum and Instruction. Today, she continues to be a steadfast champion of positive student outcomes. Her work invites youth to confront hard topics while developing their own passions. This is accomplished, in part, by exploring socio-political pressures in the context of individual student perceptions, needs, and goals. Self-advocacy, wherein students “protect their minds, bodies, and souls,” enables young people to reclaim their voices and identity. Advocacy anchored in wellness results in what Dr. Mackey calls a “beautiful web of activism.”

Dr. Janiece Mackey: PhD in Higher Education, 2021. Co-Founder and Director of Young Aspiring Americans for Social and Political Activism, Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Rutgers-Newark.