Drs. Elizabeth Erwin and Angela Sheely-Moore Receive Ada Beth Cutler Fellowship

received the Ada Beth Cutler Fellowship for 2021, for the project “Examining the impact of neighborhood gentrification trajectories on health and educational outcomes: Los Angeles, California, and Montclair, New Jersey.

Ada Beth Cutler served as the Dean of the College of Education and Human Services from 2000-2012. When she stepped down from that position and returned to faculty, her family, friends, and colleagues established the Ada Beth Cutler Faculty Fellows Program, to honor her dedication to public schools and teacher preparation and development.

The Fellowship program aims to support faculty members financially as they strive to learn and grow in their fields. Cutler Fellows will receive funding in support of projects that yield new knowledge in their fields or seek to improve pedagogical expertise.

As the Ada Beth Faculty Fellow Program provides opportunities for full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty, it allows our community to obtain support for projects that seek to improve the quality of work achieved in the College of Education and Human Services.

Dr. Elizabeth Joy Erwin, Professor in Teaching and Learning, prepares graduate and doctoral teacher education students to think critically, reflect deeply and teach inclusively. Dr. Erwin’s commitment to social justice (with an emphasis on disability), has been at the heart of her teaching and research locally and globally over the past 30 years.

Within an inclusive early childhood framework, Dr. Erwin focuses on community and belonging, well-being and mindfulness, and innovative approaches to research and inquiry. Current interests, which include elevating young children’s voices and exploring place-based pedagogy, are discussed in a recent co-authored article, The Study of Belonging in Early Childhood: Complexities and Possibilities. Dr. Erwin’s latest book The Power of Presence critically examines partnering with young learners to promote justice in the world and peace within.

As a recent Ada Beth Cutler Faculty Fellow recipient, Dr. Erwin will travel to Italy this spring to study a progressive educational pedagogy highly regarded for its focus on play-based learning and relationship-driven engagement. Shaped by a constructivist, student-directed curriculum, The Reggio Emilia Approach is recognized globally as a cornerstone for early childhood and primary education.

Dr. Angela Sheely-Moore is an Associate Professor in the Counseling Department. With eight years of experience counseling children and families from diverse populations in school and agency settings, Dr. Sheely-Moore specializes in the area of reading and researching counseling services to marginalized communities. In addition to being published in the areas of multicultural competencies, play-based counseling services, and counselor education andragogy, Dr. Sheely-Moore has extended her research interests to include somatic-based therapies, including mindfulness practices. In fact, she taught the inaugural course Introduction to Mindfulness in Counseling this fall semester for master’s level students. She is looking forward to creating another mind-body-based course for master’s and doctoral-level students, with an emphasis on trauma-informed counseling.