In another classic example of the student becoming the teacher, three graduates of San Diego State’s Joint Doctoral Program in Education with Claremont Graduate University have found faculty positions on campuses within the California State University system.
The three graduates – Drs. Rebecca Brooks, Rhianna Casesa, and Nicole Pyle – each earned their Doctorate of Philosophy in Education from the SDSU/CGU joint program. All three have since found faculty positions in higher education at different campuses across the CSU system since earning their respective degrees.
Dr. Rebecca Brooks, a May 2015 graduate, accepted a tenure-track faculty position in special education at CSU San Marcos as an assistant professor. She will be preparing teacher candidates and leadership personnel in the School of Education's Mild/Moderate and Moderate/Severe Education Specialist credential and master's degree program options. Dr. Brooks studied the long-term effects that exist for high school students who were peer tutors for students with moderate to severe disabilities in her dissertation, “Exploring the Long-term Benefits from Peer Tutoring High School Students with Significant Disabilities.”
Dr. Rhianna Casesa, an August 2015 graduate, accepted a full-time tenure-track position in the Department of Literacy Studies and Elementary Education at Sonoma State University. She will help the department develop their programs to prepare teachers to work with English Learners. She focused her dissertation, "Bicultural Identity Development and Sense of School Belongingness in English-only and Dual-language Programs", on English Learner identity.
Dr. Nicole Pyle, a 2008 graduate, is joining the faculty of the College of Education at San Diego State University as an assistant professor in the Special Education Department. Prior to joining the faculty at SDSU, Dr. Pyle was an assistant professor in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at Utah State University for four years and an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Postdoctoral Fellow on Reading Disabilities and Response to Intervention at The University of Texas at Austin for two years. She remains a Fellow in The Dropout Institute at The Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk at The University of Texas at Austin.