Welcome new iCubed scholars

The VCU School of Education welcomes four new colleagues to our Ram family who have been hired through the iCubed initiative. Please extend a warm welcome and congratulations to all!

Headshot of Dr. Danielle Apugo, iCubed visiting scholar.Dr. Danielle Apugo is an educator, storyteller, scholar-activist and an assistant professor of urban education at the University of the District of Columbia. Apugo explores the educational experiences, epistemologies, culture, resistance and intellectual uprising of black women and girls within the United States. She joins SOE as a visiting iCubed scholar researching methods toward disrupting criminalization in education. She is a past recipient of the Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Headshot of Dr. Andrene Castro, iCubed visiting scholar.Dr. Andrene Castro earned a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin with a focus on educational leadership and policy studies and a concentration in race and gender policy. Castro's dissertation is titled "Leading in Precarious Markets: Hiring and Organizational Decisions in Contexts of Shortages." Her primary research area explores policies and leadership practices impacting the teacher workforce, particularly for teachers of color in urban settings. She also studies the cultural politics of race in education.

Headshot of Dr. Dwayne Cormier, iCubed visiting scholar.Dr. Dwayne Cormier is a scholar of curriculum and instruction with an emphasis on curriculum and supervision. Cormier's line of research is the intersection among teachers’ stated beliefs, observable teaching practices, and student interactions implicated by the sociocultural gap along with their impact on teacher-student relationships, student learning outcomes, and organizational/school culture. His research is centered around bridging the sociocultural gap between educational practitioners and students within PreK-12 majority-minority teaching and learning contexts.

Headshot of Dr. Rachel Gomez, iCubed visiting scholar.Dr. Rachel Gomez joins us from the University of Arizona where she earned a Ph.D. in Mexican American Studies and served as the principal investigator on a project titled Equality and Civic Participation: Examining Profiles of Critical Social Analysis of Inequality. Gomez studies the influence of race in urban education and youth development. Her work investigates the significance of critical pedagogies on the critical consciousness and sociopolitical development of adolescents, with particular focus on identity, race, ethnicity, immigration, gender and culture on educational experiences.

The VCU iCubed initiative is a catalyst for eradicating silos by creating collaborations focused on the welfare of urban populations. The Visiting Faculty Scholars Program provides a forum for diverse scholars to solve real challenges related to education, empowerment, health disparities and justice.