Sarah Galvin (she/her/hers) is a PhD candidate in the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology program at MSU and a proud former high school English teacher dedicated to supporting teachers and their communities. Her research focuses on the intersection of social media, literacy, and identity in the classroom, exploring pedagogical implications for both in-service and pre-service teachers. She has shared her work widely with scholars and educators at conferences including AERA, SITE, ICLS, NCTE, and NCTEAR, as well as through numerous teacher professional development events in East Lansing and surrounding communities. Sarah has also been a leader within MSU's College of Education and the CEPSE department as a recipient of the Council of Graduate Students (COGS) Disciplinary Leadership Award (2021) and as a founding and active member of several graduate student groups aimed at uplifting diverse student voices, creating community among students, and advocating for program-wide changes that promote equity and improve students' learning experiences. Find her recent publications in TechTrends (2019), Information and Learning Sciences (2020), Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2019), and Teachers College Record (2019, 2020).

Sanfeng Miao is a 2nd year doctoral student in the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Learning (HALE) program. Sanfeng is originally from China. She moved to the United States in 2017 to pursue her master’s studies at Boston College and found her passion in higher education and student affairs. Her research interests include curriculum internationalization, international student and faculty mobility, and diversification of the academic labor force. Among many aspirations Sanfeng has as a leadership fellow, Sanfeng is especially excited to work with her peers to better international graduate students’ experiences at MSU. For fun, Sanfeng enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking, biking, and kayaking. She is also a travel enthusiast, cat lover, seasoned runner, and coffeeholic.

Radhika Sen is a Master's student in the Strategic Communications program at the College of Communication Arts & Sciences. For several years, she has worked in the higher education sector in both India and the U.S. and believes it is genuinely a space capable of catalyzing societal transformation. She brings this conviction to her work as a Leadership Development Fellow, in which she hopes to help find innovative ways to build a stronger culture of belonging and community at Michigan State University.

Qi Huang is a second-year doctoral student at the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) with a concentration in Lifespan Human Development and Family Diversity at Michigan State University. Qi is originally from China. Her personal experiences of being an international student in the United States helped her to develop research interests in the cultural adaption experiences of Asian/Asian American minority population, particularly Chinese international students’ mental health and well-being. She is specifically interested in how their cultural adjustment, gender identity, and socioeconomic status impact their psychological outcomes. Qi has worked with international students in crises at the Office for International Students and Scholars (OISS) which led her to her current research interests in the Chinese international student population. The main goal of her research is to better understand Asian/Asian Americans’ migration experiences, explore the stressors affecting their mental health, and hopefully provide practical implications on better supporting this ethnic minority group. Qi has served as a representative of international students in the Sexual Violence Advisory Committee at MSU in 2018-2019. She also volunteers as an interpreter at Chinese American Service League (CASL) which is the largest social service non-profit agency in the Midwest serving Asian Americans. Qi hopes to draw attention to international graduate students’ mental health issues and promote improving the access of campus resources for this group. Qi is also looking forward to advancing her leadership skills through the graduate leadership development fellowship.

Philip Montgomery is a 2nd year doctoral student in the Second Language Studies program. His research interests lie at the intersection of language policy, multilingual education, and language teacher development, especially in international contexts. Most recently, he has been investigating collaborative relationships between language and content teachers in Kazakhstan in order to better understand teacher agency in the face of internationalizing language policies. Philip holds a BA in Spanish from the College of Wooster and an MEd in Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In past professional roles, he has been a middle and high school Spanish teacher as well as program director for an Academic English program at an international English-medium university where he has advocated for student-centered teaching practices and expertise building. He looks forward to using the leadership fellowship as a platform to help graduate students develop meaningful relationships with other members of their programs in order to build a program community and to support the academic and personal success of all students.

Nikolay (Nick) Ivanov is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. His research zeroes in on addressing the security issues of the new blockchain technology and using smart contracts to address some social problems, such as poor Internet access in rural communities and Internet provider monopolization. Nick is the current president of Spartan State Security student organization devoted to ethical hacking and cybersecurity awareness. He is also a 2020 ICER Cloud Computing Fellow and certified Cyber Ambassador.

Katie Westby is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Program in Mathematics Education. Before coming to MSU, Katie taught high school mathematics, special education, English language learners, and English language arts. Katie’s work proposes the integration of disability justice throughout research and teaching processes in order to facilitate more just and equitable mathematics learning spaces for students and teachers who identify as being disabled, having a disability, and other identifications associated with what has been traditionally called disability. For this fellowship, Katie is collaborating with others to deliver professional development for mathematics graduate teaching assistants in accessible and inclusive teaching in undergraduate mathematics classes.

Jessie B. Pink II (He/Him/ His)  is a 2nd-year Dual Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences.  His research applies Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the Darden-Kamel Socioeconomic Index to examine the spatial distribution of environmental health problems, exploring the social forces that create power differentials in environmental regulations and policies, and developing community-based strategies to reduce the exposure risk from environmental contaminants. As a Leadership Fellow, Jessie focuses on better learning different ways to motivate and inspire others to achieve their goals.

Hima Rawal is a doctoral candidate in the Second Language Studies Program, Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures (LiLaC). She earned her MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from Michigan State University (under a Fulbright Fellowship) and M.Ed. in English Education from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. She has served as a graduate student representative in the College of Arts and Letters’ College Graduate Committee, College Curriculum Committee, and College Advisory Council. She has volunteered in teaching English to immigrant youth and adults at Lansing Public library, Capital Area Literacy Coalition, and the Refugee Development Center’s GLOBE program. In her undergraduate teaching at MSU, she cultivates a culture of care to enhance her students’ success and overall well-being. She was the inaugural recipient of the Susan M. Gass award for teaching conferred by MSU in 2020. Her research investigates pedagogical practices in linguistically and culturally diverse mainstream classroom settings (K-12 and college classes). As a leadership development fellow, she hopes to explore intercultural and linguistic aspects that play a role in international students’ seeking of and accessing mental health resources on campus.

Elizabeth Stebbins is a master’s student in the Fisheries and Wildlife department at Michigan State University. Before joining the Quantitative Fisheries Center, where her project focuses on growth model applications to fish species in the Great Lakes, she worked in the U.S. Senate on natural resource issues and for an environmental non-profit in Washington, D.C. Liz loves reading, running, cooking, listening to movie scores on repeat, and (of course) fish. As a leadership fellow, she hopes to work toward integrating graduate student life into that of the Lansing community and buoying graduate student wellness at MSU.

Daniel Puentes is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, where he researches at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. His research involves measuring the mass of radioactive nuclei with high precision and how it can tell us why protons and neutrons are arranged inside a nucleus providing clues to its shape. This research also helps scientists understand how the elements were created in different stellar environments! Outside of the laboratory, he also co-hosts “The Sci-Files” on WDBM with Chelsie Boodoo, and he helped start MSU SciComm, a science communication club on campus. Daniel has also served as a regional hub leader with the National Science Policy Network and participated in the City of East Lansing’s Emerging Leaders program. It is his passion to serve as an agent of change to his local community as a leader.

Cordelia Martin-Ikpe is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, specializing in health geography and global urban studies. Her dissertation examines health disparities across Metro Detroit by investigating the relationships between composite socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhood, racial residential segregation, and health outcomes. Cordelia is passionate about teaching and community service. She has been an environmental health lecturer, served as co-president of the Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG) student group, and functioned as the grad student liaison for MSU Geography’s Advancing Geography Through Diversity Program (AGTDP). Prior to joining MSU Geography, she was a full-time public health professional working in the area of research and program evaluation. It was through her work that she developed an interest in timely research that can be applied to mitigating health inequity and systemic racism in America’s metropolitan cities. Pursuing a Ph.D. in geography allows Cordelia to study the connections between disease incidence, prevalence, and health inequity through a spatial lens, and contribute to innovative approaches to persistent public health challenges.  

Chelsie Boodoo is a Biosystem and Agricultural Engineering Ph.D. student at MSU in Dr. Alocilja’s lab where she studies African Swine Fever. She also works to connect researchers around the world to save lives through the Global Alliance for Rapid Diagnostics. Along with fellow students, she has collaborated in designing a welcoming environment that fosters all aspects of science communication (scicomm) in a modern, dynamic, youthful way for all. Her passion for scicomm drives her to find unconventional and inspiring ways to mix science with the art of storytelling. This led her to be the founder and President of MSU SciComm. Chelsie co-hosts the award-winning show, "The Sci-Files", with Daniel Puentes on Impact 89FM, where they explore various MSU student research topics.

Samridh SatijaI is a third-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Chemistry/Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) in Dr. Greg Severin’s lab, interested in developing separation methodologies for harvesting radionuclides from beam-activated refractory metals. Harvesting these exotic radionuclides prove to be useful for a wide variety of applications ranging from nuclear medicine to astrophysics. Prior to being a Leadership fellow, she was a Colleges’ Online Learning Academy (COLA) fellow in the Summer, that allowed me to more deeply engage with digital teaching and learning in my work and reflect on my teaching practice. As a leadership development fellow, she hope to bring further changes at the administrative and policy level to create an inclusive environment for women graduate students

Amit Sharma is a doctoral candidate in the Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education (CITE) program at the College of Education. He is interested in examining the relationship among- joy, play, and learning across various learning contexts. With a background in management and project management , Amit focuses on translating insights into learning solutions. His dissertation research centers specifically on children's ideas and experiences of joy, play, and learning in the context of engaging with selected math toys at a Montessori school. Amit completed his undergraduate in Mathematics, Statistics, and Economics and his master’s degree in Management from India. He was working with leading corporate organizations before switching to the development sector. He has over ten years of experience in the education sector- as an elementary teacher, curriculum maker, professional development facilitator, and founder of an educational not-for-profit. At MSU, he has been involved with the Connected Mathematics Project and with the Tanzania Partnership Project where he is working on a project related to the promotion of Play-based Learning in Tanzania.

Ece Erder is a 2nd year MS student for Comparative Medicine and Integrative Biology. She graduated from MSU in 2020 with a BS in Cellular and Developmental Neuroscience, and held many positions on campus such as Assistant to the Deans, Research Assistant for Mathematics Department as well as Resident Assistant for 3 years. She is from Turkey, and moved here for college in 2016, and is very passionate on breaking down barriers and increasing inclusivity for marginalized groups and minorities. She is also a professional Scuba Diver, Volleyball player and plays 3 instruments and speaks 3 languages fluently. Her research focus is in cancer treatments and neurodegenerative disorders.